PhD Studentship: Parametrising Wakes for Oceanographic Models

Supervisor(s)

1. Dr Charlie Lloyd, Loughborough University
2. Prof Rob Dorrell, Loughborough University
3. Dr Majid Bastankhah, Durham University
4. Michela De Dominicis, National Oceanography Centre (NOC)
5. Dr Jennifer Graham, CEFAS
6. Jon Rees, CEFAS

Enquiries email:  c.j.lloyd@lboro.ac.uk

Funding for: UK, EU and International students

Subject areas

• Engineering & Technology
• Physical & Environmental Science
• Mathematics & Statistics 

Project description

This project aims to advance sea-surface parameterisations of atmospheric offshore wind farm wakes for use in oceanographic models. Delivering a functional oceanographic model for future research into impacts of offshore wind deployment to inform marine spatial planning, supported by NOC and CEFAS, using the North-West European Shelf FVCOM model. 

The offshore wind sector is rapidly expanding to meet net-zero energy demands. Individual turbines and farms are getting larger and further from shore, with individual turbines spanning 240 m in diameter and farms reaching 600 km2. Forced by spatial constraints and enabled by floating technology, farms are now developing in deeper waters, occupying increasingly vast areas. 

Oceanographic flow processes are highly sensitive to sea surface boundary conditions, which are in turn critically dependent on atmospheric forcing. Atmospheric flows past offshore wind turbines produce highly turbulent and extensive wakes. These wakes are a necessary result of energy extraction from the wind. They are a key motivation for spatial planning of offshore wind farms where turbine placement is optimised for maximum energy extraction while minimising costs associated with infrastructure and spatial footprint. The turbulent wakes propagate downstream, leading to wake-wake interactions and farm-scale atmospheric flow processes with a significantly reduced wind speed in the lee of an offshore wind farm).

It has been recently shown that such large-scale atmospheric interactions can have a significant effect on sea-surface conditions. Large-scale deployment of offshore wind farms in shelf seas therefore poses an emerging oceanographic problem; shelf seas are vital for life both on and below water through their control on the vertical transport of nutrients, and their role as a key component of the biogeochemical cycle. These are crucially dependent on general circulation and water column structure, which are both highly sensitive to conditions at the sea surface (Dorrell et al., 2022). Yet the impact of offshore wind expansion on sea surface conditions and subsequent regional scale effects is poorly understood and has only recently gained research interest.

While wake parameterisations for atmospheric models have received significant interest over the last decade, the current state-of-the-art oceanographic models make sweeping assumptions regarding the form of sea-surface forcing, particularly concerning wake-wake interactions, spatial variability, and turbulent modifications (Christiansen et al., 2022). These limitations must be overcome for accurate prediction of oceanographic responses to offshore wind expansion.

Eligibility requirements

If you have received or expect to achieve before starting your PhD programme a First-class Honours degree, or a 2:1 Honours degree and a Masters, or a Distinction at Masters level a degree (or the international equivalents) in physics, engineering, mathematics or environmental/earth science and have studied fluid mechanics/physical oceanography to a high level, we would like to hear from you.

This scholarship is only available to Home (UK) students.

Closes: 9 May 2025

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