Welcome to the NREL Global Climate Model Evaluation Repository

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. 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.

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

Acknowledgments

This work was authored by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, operated by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308. This research was supported by the Grid Modernization Initiative of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as part of its Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium, a strategic partnership between DOE and the national laboratories to bring together leading experts, technologies, and resources to collaborate on the goal of modernizing the nation’s grid. Funding provided by the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), the DOE Office of Electricity (OE), the DOE Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM), and the DOE Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER). The research was performed using computational resources sponsored by the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and located at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The views expressed in the article do not necessarily represent the views of the DOE or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this work, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes.