EnhancedSD: Downscaling Solar Irradiance from Climate Model Projections (Papers Track)
Nidhin Harilal (University of Colorado, Boulder); Bri-Mathias S Hodge (University of Colorado Boulder); Claire Monteleoni (University of Colorado Boulder); Aneesh Subramanian (University of California, San Diego)
Abstract
Renewable energy-based electricity systems are seen as a keystone of future decarbonization efforts. However, power system planning does not currently consider the impacts of climate change on renewable energy resources such as solar energy, chiefly due to a paucity of climate-impacted high-resolution solar power data. Existing statistical downscaling (SD) methods that learn to map coarse-resolution versions of historical reanalysis data to generate finer resolution outputs are of limited use when applied to future climate model projections due to the domain gap between climate models and reanalysis data. In contrast, we present EnhancedSD, a deep learning-based framework for downscaling coarse-scale climate model outputs to high-resolution observational (reanalysis) data. Our proposed ML based downscaling allows for future reanalysis projections, which can be pivotal for mitigating climate change’s impacts on power systems planning.