Solar and wind in the Sahara desert: scientists say it could change the game

The Sahara Desert is the largest of its kind in the world, just behind Antarctica and the Arctic, and it is the largest "hot desert" on our planet. Alongside this, at its southern border, lies the Sahel, a region of "transition" that is not as dry or barren.

Together, these regions are spread across 10 countries, including North Africa, Egypt and Sudan, meaning that the total area is roughly equal to that of China or the United States. Despite its size, the central Sahara itself receives about an inch of water per year in rainfall. Think about that.

The Sahara Desert is one of the largest regions in the world. The transformation of it through solar and wind farms could change the situation (Wikimedia Commons).

This has not always been the case; every 41,000 years or so, because of the inclination of the Earth's axis (and thus the monsoon season in North Africa), it becomes a lush savannah teeming with life and water.

A team of scientists concluded that the deployment of solar and wind parks in the area would produce much more rain (and therefore more natural vegetation) in the areas where they exist. Due to what the study calls "albedo – rainfall – vegetation feedback" (albedo is essentially a reflection of light and electromagnetic radiation), the models used by scientists showed that the deployment of solar and wind parks mm per day (0.0441 inches). Translation? Sixteen inches a year of increased rain. This is 16 times what normally happens in the aridest areas of the Sahara and twice that of the Sahel.

A young Moroccan goes past a tent during a mountain bike race in the Sahara. Currently, most of the 3.5 million square miles of the Sahara Desert looks like this (FRANCK FIFE photo credit / AFP / Getty Images).

As with most scientific proposals, it is not practical to do so for the moment; The models used require 9 million square kilometers, which represents a challenge for the political, social and economic systems of the 10 countries of the region. In addition, before natural vegetation develops and begins to cool and change cycles, wind farms would increase the temperature by 2 degrees Celsius. Solar systems would increase temperatures by 1 degree Celsius. However, we are far from what fossil fuels do: they raise temperatures 30 times more than solar voltaic cells.

However, the potential profit is tempting; Such a monumental installation of solar and wind power plants has the potential to produce, each year, four times more energy than the world consumes.

From the study:

"Our results from experiments conducted with a climate model suggest that, for wind and solar farm installations whose current conversion efficiency in the desert is large enough to feed the entire world, the impacts on the regional climate would be beneficial rather than detrimental. , and the impacts on global average temperature are still low compared to those induced by CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.