Discovery Park

Sara C. Pryor, Provosts Professor of Atmospheric Science, Chair of the Atmospheric Science Program, Director of Studies: Geography, Indiana University will present a seminar on Thursday, April 8th at 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in Armstrong Hall, Room 3326.

Expansion of wind energy installed capacity is poised to play a key role in climate change mitigation. However, wind energy is also susceptible to global climate change. Some changes associated with climate evolution will likely benefit the wind energy industry while other changes may negatively impact wind energy developments, with such gains and losses depending on the region under consideration. I will review possible mechanisms by which global climate variability and change may influence the wind energy resource and operating conditions, summarize some of the tools that are being employed to quantify these effects and the sources of uncertainty in making such projections, and discuss results of studies conducted to date.

Sara C. Pryor is Provost Professor of Atmospheric Science at Indiana University, and also a visiting distinguished professor at the Atmospheric Environment Institute at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, and in the Department of Wind Energy and Atmospheric Physics at the Risø National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Denmark.

Professor Pryor has published 89 articles in internationally renowned journals, and edited a book published last year entitled Understanding climate change: Climate variability, predictability and change in the Midwestern US. She is contributing author to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN) (Chapter Wind Energy), editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, and is currently engaged by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) for her research on links between climate change, extreme events and critical energy infrastructure.