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Summary

This technical guide summarises a case study for the use of metocean data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service repository, the Climate Data Store (CDS). The study is an assessment of the effect of climate change on European offshore wind operations and maintenance (O&M). Data was used for several locations, for historical (1977-2003), nearfuture (2041-2070) and far-future (2071-2100) epochs. Future data was associated with Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5 climate scenarios, the middle and highest emission cases, respectively (Detlef, et al. 2011).
The metocean data was first analysed to assess the impacts of climate change. It was shown that there was typically a small reduction in wind speeds and wave heights. Comparing the results for the RCP 8.5 far-future scenario, to the historical ones, this related to a 2% mean reduction in mean wind speed and increases in maintenance-related turbine accessibility of 0-5%, suggesting increases in availability.

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