Toward resilient energy infrastructure: Understanding the effects of changes in the climate mean and extreme events in the Northeastern United States

Abstract: Infrastructure systems are vulnerable to weather risks. With climate change, extreme events are expected to increase.To evaluate these changes in the Northeastern United States, state-of-the-art high-resolution, convection-permitting regional climate modeling simulations are carried out to downscale projections of the Community Earth System Model (CESM) to 3 km horizontal resolution under a high impact emissions scenario for a near future time period (2025-2041). Changes in mean climate and extreme events are assessed relative to the present-day climate (2006-2020) for three key weather elements affecting electricity grid infrastructure and operations: temperatures, wind speeds and ice accumulation on infrastructure surfaces. An assessment of exceedance threshold calculations based on the safety thresholds set by National Electric Safety Code (NESC) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is also provided.