AccScience Publishing / AJWEP / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/AJWEP025190147
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Spatiotemporal variability and climate forcing mechanisms of wind and solar energy in northwest China

Shuyue Qin1† ,  Bingyue Wen1†* ,  Wei Bao1 ,  Xuexian Wang1 ,  Zihan Yang2 ,  Ruei-Yuan Wang3 ,  Hongbei Guo4 ,  Dongping Yu1 ,  Yanfang Jin1 ,  Yunxia Ma5 ,  Taohui Li2*
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1 Unit of Sino-British Cooperative, School of International Business, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, Kunming, Yunnan, China
2 Yunnan Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disasters and Climate Resources in the Greater Mekong Subregion, School of Earth Science, Yunnan University, Kunming, Yunnan, China
3 Department of Geography, School of Science, Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology, Maoming, Guangdong, China
4 Department of Marxism, School of Marxism, Southwest Forestry University, Kunming, Yunnan, China
5 Yunnan Key Laboratory of Plateau Geographic Processes and Environmental Change, Faculty of Geography, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, Yunnan, China
†These authors contributed equally to this work.
AJWEP, 025190147 https://doi.org/10.36922/AJWEP025190147
Received: 8 May 2025 | Revised: 30 May 2025 | Accepted: 5 June 2025 | Published online: 2 July 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

As a pivotal region for China’s wind and solar energy strategic deployment, northwest China holds critical importance in the national energy transition. Our integrated analysis reveals concerning multidecadal declines in wind energy resources (WER) and solar energy resources (SER) – climate-sensitive parameters requiring urgent mechanistic elucidation. Through the synergistic application of meteorological station networks, reanalysis datasets, and machine learning architectures, we establish three key findings: (i) both resources demonstrate regime shifts with distinct phases – initial growth, transitional decline, and accelerated depletion – superimposed with significant 29 – 30-year oscillation signals (wavelet analysis); (ii) WER and SER display marked differences in spatial evolution; WER shows an increasing trend from south to north, while SER shows a decreasing trend from the central region to the surrounding areas; and (iii) the main controlling factors of WER have shifted from air–sea cycle dominance to inter-regional climate variability, while SER exhibits the opposite trend. This is mainly attributed to a significant reduction in cloud cover and a marked decrease in the rate of increase of the daily maximum temperature. This study demonstrates that synoptic-scale circulation reorganizations override local anthropogenic impacts in determining the viability of renewable energy resources.

Keywords
Global warming
Wind energy resources
Solar energy resources
Spatiotemporal characteristics
Driving mechanism
Funding
This work was jointly supported by the Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology (GDUPT) Talents Recruitment Project (grant number: 2019rc098), the Academic Affairs of GDUPT for the Goal Problem- Oriented Teaching Innovation and Practice Project (grant number: 41967038), and the Scientific Research Innovation Foundation of Yunnan Province (grant number: KC-242410028).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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Asian Journal of Water, Environment and Pollution, Electronic ISSN: 1875-8568 Print ISSN: 0972-9860, Published by AccScience Publishing
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