Bridging CORDEX and CMIP6: Machine Learning Downscaling for Wind and Solar Energy Droughts in Central Europe

TL;DR

This paper presents a machine learning emulator trained on climate model data to efficiently produce high-resolution regional climate projections, aiding renewable energy planning by analyzing future wind and solar droughts in Central Europe.

Contribution

It introduces a machine learning approach that accurately downscales climate model data, providing a computationally efficient alternative to traditional regional climate modeling.

Findings

Downscaling with ML emulators yields accurate regional climate data.

Future energy drought days are likely to decrease in Central Europe.

ML-based downscaling complements existing climate projection efforts.

Abstract

Reliable regional climate information is essential for assessing the impacts of climate change and for planning in sectors such as renewable energy; yet, producing high-resolution projections through coordinated initiatives like CORDEX that run multiple physical regional climate models is both computationally demanding and difficult to organize. Machine learning emulators that learn the mapping between global and regional climate fields offer a promising way to address these limitations. Here we introduce the application of such an emulator: trained on CMIP5 and CORDEX simulations, it reproduces regional climate model data with sufficient accuracy. When applied to CMIP6 simulations not seen during training, it also produces realistic results, indicating stable performance. Using CORDEX data, CMIP5 and CMIP6 simulations, as well as regional data generated by two machine learning models, we analyze the co-occurrence of low wind speed and low solar radiation and find indications that the number of such energy drought days is likely to decrease in the future. Our results highlight that downscaling with machine learning emulators provides an efficient complement to efforts such as CORDEX, supplying the higher-resolution information required for impact assessments.