Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Wind and solar farms offer a major pathway to clean, renewable energies. However, these farms would significantly change land surface properties, and, if sufficiently large, the farms may lead to unintended climate consequences. In this study, we used a climate model with dynamic vegetation to show that large-scale installations of wind and solar farms covering the Sahara lead to a local temperature increase and more than a twofold precipitation increase, especially in the Sahel, through increased surface friction and reduced albedo. The resulting increase in vegetation further enhances precipitation, creating a positive albedo-precipitation-vegetation feedback that contributes ~80% of the precipitation increase for wind farms. This local enhancement is scale dependent and is particular to the Sahara, with small impacts in other deserts.
Source: Science
Institutions: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Beijing Normal University, State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, University of Maryland, College Park, The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Atmospheric Physics
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2891604044