A sensitivity study of the WRF model in offshore wind modeling over the Baltic Sea

Accurate wind modeling is important for wind resources assessment and wind power forecasting. To improve the WRF model configuration for the offshore wind modeling over the Baltic Sea, this study performed a sensitivity study of the WRF model to multiple model configurations, including domain setup, grid resolution, sea surface temperature, land surface data, and atmosphere-wave coupling. The simulated offshore wind was evaluated against LiDAR observations under different wind directions, atmospheric stabilities, and sea status. Generally, the simulated wind profiles matched observations, despite systematic underestimations. Strengthening the forcing from the reanalysis data through reducing the number of nested domains played the largest role in improving wind modeling. Atmosphere-wave coupling further improved the simulated wind, especially under the growing and mature sea conditions. Increasing the vertical resolution, and updating the sea surface temperature and the land surface information only had a slight impact, mainly visible during very stable conditions. Increasing the horizontal resolution also only had a slight impact, most visible during unstable conditions. Our study can help to improve the wind resources assessment and wind power forecasting over the Baltic Sea.