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Welcome to the NREL Global Climate Model Evaluation Repository
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The interplay between energy, climate, and weather is becoming more complex due
to increasing contributions of renewable energy generation, energy storage,
electrified end uses, and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events.
Energy system analyses commonly rely on meteorological inputs to estimate
renewable energy generation and energy demand; however, these inputs rarely
represent the estimated impacts of future climate change. Climate models and
publicly available climate change datasets can be used for this purpose, but
the selection of inputs from the myriad of available models and datasets is a
nuanced and subjective process. In this work, we assess datasets from various
global climate models (GCMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project
Phase 6 (CMIP6). We present evaluations of their skills with respect to the
historical climate and comparisons of their future projections of climate
change. We present the results for different climatic and energy system regions
and include interactive figures in the accompanying software repository.
Previous work has presented similar GCM evaluations, but none have presented
variables and metrics specifically intended for comprehensive energy systems
analysis including impacts on energy demand, thermal cooling, hydropower, water
availability, solar energy generation, and wind energy generation. We focus on
GCM output meteorological variables that directly affect these energy system
components including the representation of extreme values that can drive grid
resilience events. The objective of this work is not to recommend the best
climate model and dataset for a given analysis, but instead to provide a
reference to facilitate the selection of climate models and datasets in
subsequent work.
The interplay between energy, climate, and weather is becoming more complex due to increasing
contributions of renewable energy generation, energy storage, electrified end uses, and the
increasing frequency of extreme weather events. Energy system analyses commonly rely on
meteorological inputs to estimate renewable energy generation and energy demand; however,
these inputs rarely represent the estimated impacts of future climate change. Climate models and
publicly available climate change datasets can be used for this purpose, but the selection of
inputs from the myriad of available models and datasets is a nuanced and subjective process. In
this work, we assess datasets from various global climate models (GCMs) from the Coupled
Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). We present evaluations of their skills with
respect to the historical climate and comparisons of their future projections of climate change for
two climate change scenarios. We present the results for different climatic and energy system
regions and include interactive figures in the accompanying software repository. Previous work
has presented similar GCM evaluations, but none have presented variables and metrics
specifically intended for comprehensive energy systems analysis including impacts on energy
demand, thermal cooling, hydropower, water availability, solar energy generation, and wind
energy generation. We focus on GCM output meteorological variables that directly affect these
energy system components including the representation of extreme values that can drive grid
resilience events. The objective of this work is not to recommend the best climate model and
dataset for a given analysis, but instead to provide a reference to facilitate the selection of
climate models and scenarios in subsequent work.

For interactive comparisons of GCM projections, check out the regional
results `here <https://nrel.github.io/gcm_eval/regions/conus.html>`_.
All of the plots after the skill tables are interactive. Try hovering your
mouse over data points, clicking and dragging, scrolling, and double clicking
on the legends.

An NREL technical report is in preparation and will accompany this repository
with a discussion of the methods and results.
For details on the methods and a discussion of the results, see the NREL technical report here:

::

Buster, Grant, Slater Podgorny, Laura Vimmerstedt, Brandon Benton, and Nicholas D.
Lybarger. 2024. Evaluation of Global Climate Models for Use in Energy Analysis.
Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL/TP-6A20-90166.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy24osti/90166.pdf.

The NREL software record for this repository is SWR-24-37

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