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New study finds that building massive solar farms in deserts around the world could have unintended consequences. The revealing research claims huge solar farms, such as in the Sahara, could trigger environmental crises, including changing the climate and causing global warming.
The study was carried out by Zhengyao Lu, a researcher in physical geography at Lund University, and Benjamin Smith, research director at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at the University of Western Sydney. The results of their research were published in a February 11 article in The Conversation.
Solar panels are darker colors such as black and blue to attract and absorb more heat, but they are generally much darker than the ground around the solar panel. The post cites an article that claims most solar panels are between 15% and 20% efficient at converting sunlight into usable energy. The researchers say that the rest of the sunlight is reflected back into the surrounding environment as heat, “affecting the climate.”
The article notes that to replace fossil fuels, solar farms would have to be huge – covering thousands of square kilometers, according to this article. Solar farms of this magnitude potentially have environmental consequences, not only locally but globally.
The authors of a 2018 study claim that climate models show that installing a large number of wind turbines would double rainfall in the Sahara Desert and that solar panels would increase rainfall by 50%. The researchers came to this conclusion by determining that solar panels and wind turbines would decrease the albedo on the ground surface. Albedo is the fraction of light reflected from a body or surface.
From the conversation:
The model found that when the size of the solar park reaches 20% of the total area of the Sahara, it triggers a feedback loop. The heat emitted by the darker solar panels (compared to the highly reflective desert soil) creates a large temperature difference between the land and the surrounding oceans which ultimately lowers the surface air pressure and causes the moist air to rise and condense in raindrops. With more monsoon rain, plants grow and the desert reflects less of the sun’s energy, as vegetation absorbs light better than sand and soil. With more plants present, more water evaporates, creating a more humid environment which causes vegetation to spread.
Transforming the Sahara Desert into a lush green oasis could have climatic ramifications around the planet, including affecting the atmosphere, ocean, land, altering entire ecosystems, altering precipitation in tropical rainforests. ‘Amazonia, causing droughts and potentially triggering more tropical cyclones.
The well-intentioned effort to lower the global temperature could potentially do the opposite and raise the planet’s temperature, the researchers say.
Covering 20% of the Sahara with solar farms increases local temperatures in the desert by 1.5 ° C according to our model. At 50% coverage, the temperature increase is 2.5 ° C. This warming eventually spreads around the world through the movements of the atmosphere and oceans, increasing the global average temperature by 0.16 ° C. for 20% coverage and 0.39 ° C for 50% coverage. The global temperature change is not uniform, however – the polar regions would warm more than the tropics, increasing the loss of sea ice in the Arctic. This could further accelerate warming, as melting sea ice exposes dark water that absorbs much more solar energy.
The authors conclude their article by stating that renewable energy solutions “may help society switch from fossil fuels, but Earth system studies like ours underscore the importance of considering the many coupled responses of the world. atmosphere, oceans and land surface when considering their benefits and risks.
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