1. PROJECT ----------- Title: CLimate-Energy modelling for Assessing Resilience: HEAt Decarbonisation and the Northwest European Supergrid (CLEARHEADS) Dates: 1st January 2020 - 31st December 2021 Funding organisation: Supergen Energy Networks Hub flexible fund Grant no.: EP/S00078X/1 (Supergen Energy aNetworks Hub 2018) 2. DATASET ------------ Title: ERA5 derived time series of European aggregated surface weather variables, wind power and solar power capacity factors: hourly data from 1950-2020 Publication Year: 2021 Creator(s): H.C. Bloomfield, D.J. Brayshaw Organisation(s): University of Reading, National Centre for Atmospheric Science Source(s): This dataset was created using meteorological data from the ERA5 reanalysis available from https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/home Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) (2017): ERA5: Fifth generation of ECMWF atmospheric reanalyses of the global climate. Copernicus Climate Change Service Climate Data Store (CDS), date of access: 14-01-2019. https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/home Cite as: Bloomfield, Hannah and Brayshaw, David (2021): ERA5 derived time series of European aggregated surface weather variables, wind power, and solar power capacity factors: hourly data from 1950-2020. University of Reading. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.000321 3. TERMS OF USE ---------------- Copyright 2021 University of Reading. This dataset is licensed by the rights-holder(s) under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. 4. CONTENTS ------------ The hourly time-series of near-surface meteorological variables, degree days, wind power capacity factor and solar power capacity factor data can be found in the relevant subdirectories in netCDF files organised into Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) regions. Further details of the NUTS zones are given in the methods and processing section. The contents of each folder are described below. degree_days: NUTS_0_CDD_historical_pop_weighted.nc - Daily population weighted Cooling Degree Days (CDD) at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. NUTS_0_HDD_historical_pop_weighted.nc - Daily population weighted Heating Degree Days (HDD) at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. solar_power_capacity_factor: NUTS_0_sp_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged solar power capacity factors at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. NUTS_0_sp_historical_loc_weighted.nc - Hourly solar power capacity factors at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. Data is weighted by the location of known solar panels from Dunnett et al., (2020) and Stowell et al., (2020) for the UK. NUTS_1_sp_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged solar power capacity factors at NUTS1 level over the UK from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. NUTS_2_sp_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged solar power capacity factors at NUTS2 level over Scotland from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. speed100m: NUTS_0_speed100m_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged 100m wind speed data at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. NUTS_1_speed100m_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged 100m wind speed data at NUTS1 level over the UK from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. NUTS_2_speed100m_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged 100m wind speed data at NUTS2 level over Scotland from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. speed10m: NUTS_0_speed10m_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged 10m wind speed data at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. NUTS_0_speed10m_historical_pop_weighted.nc - Hourly population weighted 10m wind speed data at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. NUTS_1_speed10m_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged 10m wind speed data at NUTS1 level over the UK from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. NUTS_2_speed10m_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged 10m wind speed data at NUTS2 level over Scotland from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. ssrd: NUTS_0_ssrd_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged surface shortwave radiation data at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. NUTS_0_ssrd_historical_pop_weighted.nc - Hourly population weighted surface shortwave radiation data at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. NUTS_1_ssrd_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged surface shortwave radiation data at NUTS1 level over the UK from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. NUTS_2_ssrd_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged surface shortwave radiation data at NUTS2 level over Scotland from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. t2m: NUTS_0_t2m_detrended_timeseries_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged 2m temperature data at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. Data is detrended to various warming levels. NUTS_0_t2m_detrended_timeseries_historical_pop_weighted.nc - Hourly population weighted 2m temperature data at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. Data is detrended to various warming levels. NUTS_1_t2m_detrended_timeseries_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged 2m temperature data at NUTS1 level over the UK from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. Data is detrended to various warming levels. NUTS_2_t2m_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged 2m temperature data at NUTS2 level over Scotland from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. Data is detrended to various warming levels. wp_offshore: NUTS_0_wp_ofs_sim_0_historical_loc_weighted.nc - Hourly area-averaged onshore wind power capacity factor data at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. Weighted by the locations of known wind farms from thewindpower.net using the 2021 wind farm distribution (simulation 0). NUTS_0_wp_ofs_sim_1_historical_loc_weighted.nc - Hourly area-averaged onshore wind power capacity factor data at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. Weighted by the locations of known and proposed future wind farms from thewindpower.net (simulation 1). /12/2020. Weighted by the locations of known and proposed future wind farms from thewindpower.net (simulation 1). EEZ_zones_wp_historical.nc Hourly area-averaged offshore wind power capacity factor data over national Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) across Europe from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. Shipping_zones_Ireland_wp_ofs_historical.nc Hourly area-averaged offshore wind power capacity factor data over the UK Met office Shipping forecasting zones with Irelands Exclusive Economic Zone, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. Shipping_zones_Norway_wp_ofs_historical.nc Hourly area-averaged offshore wind power capacity factor data over the UK Met office Shipping forecasting zones with Norway’s Exclusive Economic Zone, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. Shipping_zones_United_Kingdom_wp_ofs_historical.nc Hourly area-averaged offshore wind power capacity factor data over the UK Met office Shipping forecasting zones with the United Kingdoms Exclusive Economic Zone from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. wp_onshore: NUTS_0_wp_ons_sim_0_historical_loc_weighted.nc - Hourly area-averaged offshore wind power capacity factor data at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. Weighted by the locations of known wind farms from thewindpower.net using the 2021 wind farm distribution (simulation 0). NUTS_0_wp_ons_sim_1_historical_loc_weighted.nc - Hourly area-averaged offshore wind power capacity factor data at NUTS0 level across Europe, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. Weighted by the locations of known and proposed future wind farms from thewindpower.net (simulation 1). NUTS_1_wp_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged onshore wind power capacity factor data at NUTS1 level over the UK, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. NUTS_2_wp_historical.nc - Hourly area-averaged onshore wind power capacity factor data at NUTS1 level over Scotland, from 01/01/1950 - 31/12/2020. 5. METHOD and PROCESSING -------------------------- Within the datasets above different regions are used for the NUTS0, NUTS1 and NUTS2 data products. For NUTS0 the countries used are: Austria, Albania, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom. The exception to this is the wp_onshore and wp_offshore folder where the countries used are: United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia. For NUTS1 the zones used over the UK are: UKC, UKD, UKE, UKF, UKG, UKH, UKI, UKJ, UKK, UKL, UKM, UKN. For NUTS2 the zones used over Scotland are: UKM5, UKM6, UKM7, UKM8, UKM9. The Countries Exclusive Economic zones (EEZ) for which offshore wind power generation is calculated are: France, Italy, Portugal, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Croatia, Romania, Slovenia, Greece, Turkey, Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria, Spain, Norway, United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Poland. The Met office shipping zones within the Ireland EEZ are: Lundy Fastnet Irish_Sea Shannon Rockall Malin The Met office shipping zones within the Norway EEZ are: South_Utsire Forties Fisher The Met office shipping zones within the United Kingdom EEZ are: Forties Cromarty Forth Tyne Dogger Fisher Humber Thames Dover Wight Portland Plymouth Lundy Irish_Sea Malin Hebrides,Fair_Isle' Wind Power model: A time series of hourly wind power capacity factor for each spatial region was derived from 100m wind speed data from the ERA5 reanalysis. These winds are calibrated using the method in Bloomfield et al. (2020) and extrapolated down to the average height of an onshore or offshore wind turbine from thewindpower.net database. The wind power generation in each grid box was then calculated by passing the extrapolated wind speeds through an onshore or offshore power curve taken from a National Grid report. This can then either be area averaged or weighted by the location of the turbines (taken from thewindpower.net database) to get regional-aggregate wind power capacity factor data. Solar Power model: A time series of hourly solar power capacity factor for each spatial region was derived from 2m temperatures and surface short wave radiation data from the ERA5 reanalysis. This is an empirical model developed from the methods used in Evans and Florschuetz (1977) and Bett and Thornton (2016). Heating Degree days and cooling degree days: Calculated using the methods described in Bloomfield et al. (2020) Detrended 2m temperature data: Within these files the 'raw' 2m temperature data from ERA5 is included (including the impacts of anthropogenic climate change from 1950-2020). As well as three versions of this data are available where a linear trend has been removed from the ERA5 data, and then 2m temperatures have been adjusted to 1950, 1980, 2010 and 2020 levels of warming. References: Evans, D.L. and L.W. Florschuetz (1977). Cost studies on terrestrial photovoltaic power systems with sunlight concentration. Solar Energy, 19, 255-262. Bett, P. E., & Thornton, H. E. (2016). The climatological relationships between wind and solar energy supply in Britain. Renewable Energy, vol 87 pt 1, 96-110. DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2015.10.006. Bloomfield, H. C., Brayshaw, D. J., & Charlton‐Perez, A. J. (2020). Characterizing the winter meteorological drivers of the European electricity system using targeted circulation types. Meteorological Applications, 27(1), e1858. Stowell, D., Kelly, J., Tanner, D., Taylor, J., Jones, E., Geddes, J., & Chalstrey, E. (2020). A harmonised, high-coverage, open dataset of solar photovoltaic installations in the UK. Scientific Data, 7(1), 1-15. Dunnett, S., Sorichetta, A., Taylor, G., & Eigenbrod, F. (2020). Harmonised global datasets of wind and solar farm locations and power. Scientific data, 7(1), 1-12.