Teal-WCA: A Climate Services Platform for Planning Solar Photovoltaic and Wind Energy Resources in West and Central Africa in the Context of Climate Change

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper addresses an important topic. Energy derived from solar and wind is volatile and the produced amounts are subject to the installed production capacity as well as short- and longterm changes, both anthropogenic and natural.

 

General:

Authors are using CMIP6-models to project sunshine hours and wind speeds in the coming decades. This is not straight-forward because the CMIP6-models have significant quality issues. Clouds are notoriously complicated to model, as seen at the low quality rainfall modelling performance of the models.

A short summary of the criticism of CMIP6 is needed here. It is generally accepted and published that the CMIP6 climate models for the latest version of the IPCC report have essentially failed. The IPCC explicitly declared in it‘s AR6 report that the model results are too biased to be used to assess parameters such as climate sensitivity (CS). The CS from the 6th generation of models are much too high and no longer match with the observed data. As the hindcast or calibration failed, the models have essentially been invalidated. One of the biggest problems are the clouds. Please use the following papers to summarize transparently the known deficiencies of the CMIP6 models, as this plays a majore role for your results:

Forster et al. 2020: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0660-0

Wang et al. 2021: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020GL091024

Press release University of Princeton: https://environment.princeton.edu/news/high-end-of-climate-sensitivity-in-new-climate-models-seen-as-less-plausible/

Voosen 2021: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/un-climate-panel-confronts-implausibly-hot-forecasts-future-warming

Scaffetta 2021: https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/9/11/161

Scaffetta 2022: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-022-06493-w

Scaffetta 2023: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/14/2/345

Mülmenstädt et al. 2021: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01038-1

full paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01038-1.epdf?sharing_token=Z7vO6ag39DuoTD0D35ZrO9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MxgYNcSqYs2L5zu9VguN7LiCFZ8F_Ad3mTzFQtJHQC8gVXAkyOYT-StN2vprX1dunj1YJEDrX1Mfd5MfM06j-uVK1vuEMqwTN9KF_7U1Obk0Mc9xpgYDBSM0ZkA3cPCJg%3D

Report about the paper in CarbonBrief: https://www.carbonbrief.org/cooling-effect-of-clouds-underestimated-by-climate-models-says-new-study

 

Line 89:

Authors acknowledge that solar energy is dependent on variations of the monsoon. This is correct but needs to be further elaborated. According to Lüdecke et al. 2021, African rainfall is strongly dependent on several oceanic oscillation. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214581821000240

In west Africa the influencing factors are the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and El Nino – Southern Oscillation (ENSO). See Fig. 3 of that paper. These oscillations operate on cycles ranging from several years to several decades. It is very likely that these oscillations also have a significant impact on sunshine hours and wind speeds. For example, the important role of the AMO for sunshine hours and PV yields has recently been documented in this paper in Scientific Reports:  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-73506-5

Authors should therfore add a paragraph on the impact of these natural oscialltions for solar photovoltaic and wind energy resources in West and Central Africa.

 

Line 92:

Authors should not use the RCP8.5 scenario. This is not realistic and was only designed for extreme theoretical cases. Please replace with a more realistic lower emission scenario. See e.g. Hausfather, Z. & Peters, G. P.: Nature 577, 618-620 (2020), Emissions – the business as usual story is misleading, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3

 

I recommend publishing the manuscript if the authors manage to address my points of criticism above.

Author Response

Thank you for your time. The responses to your comments can be found in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review of “TEAL WCA: climate services platform for planning solar photovoltaic and wind energy resources in West and Central Africa in the context of climate change”

Manuscript reference: data

Authors: Salomon et al.  

Recommendation: minor revision 

General Evaluation: 

This work examines changes in essential climate variables for solar and wind energy production using downscaled CMIP6 model projection data. In general, the manuscript is well written and it presents a nice background review in the introduction section. Analysis method and data in the study are also reasonable. There are however a few minor mistakes in the text and figures need to be corrected, e.g., some acronyms are not properly defined - please see my specific comments below. I would recommend the authors to revise the manuscript before it’s acceptable for publication.  

Specific comments:  

1. Line 81. WAF and CAF are not define in the text before they appear.
2. Figure 1. The country labels are very difficult to see, please consider change them to a darker colour without shadow effect
3. Data section - the authors use WS, TA, and GHI to stand for wind speed, surface air temperature and solar radiation respectively. However, in CMIP6 models, the variables are sfcWind, Tas and rsds. Is there any reason that the standard variable names are not adopted? 
4. Line 235, the turbine’s power curve should be reference in Fig. 2, not Fig. 1
5. Figure caption in Fig. 3 using WAF while Fig. 4 using Central African region to describe regions. Please consider using consistent format, either acronym or full phrases in both figures. 
6. Please add region in Fig. 5 caption. 
7. Figure legends for Figure 5, 6, 7 and 8 are too small. Please adjust them to the similar size as in Fig 9 and 10. 

Author Response

Thank you for your time and your valuables comments. The responses are in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The core discussion point of this article is how countries in West and Central Africa can use renewable energy to meet the growing demand for electricity in the context of fighting climate change. The article analyzes the future trends of temperature, solar radiation and wind speed through ten CMIP6 climate models. The structure and organization of the paper is clear, but it needs to be further improved and improved. In addition, there are big problems with the formulas and pictures in the article. It is recommended to hire after overhaul.

 

1．  The abstract provides a wealth of data (such as the range of temperature rise and the reduction in solar radiation), but for the target audience, it may be necessary to emphasize the significance of specific conclusions, such as how to adjust energy planning based on these changes.

2．  Figure 1's scale should be adjusted to a more aesthetically pleasing and clear form.

3．  Table 1 does not conform to the format of the three-line table.

4．  4. The formula is not centered, and the numbering should be aligned to the left.

5．  Figure 2's horizontal axis numbers are rotated 90 degrees to the right.

6．  The article quotes multiple places that do not conform to the standard.

7．  The font on each figure in this article should be changed to Times New Roman or another more aesthetically pleasing font.

8．  The discussion section and the conclusion do not reflect the significance of the research, and the limitations of the study are also not addressed.

9．  It is recommended to present the conclusion in points to facilitate the reader's understanding of the research findings.

Author Response

Thank you for your time and your insightful input. 

The responses to your comments can be found in the attached file. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

the authors have address all my concerned, and i suggest that the manuscript should be accepted as current format