Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation

Published:2018-09-07 Issue:6406 Volume:361 Page:1019-1022
ISSN:0036-8075
Container-title:Science
language:en
Short-container-title:Science

Author:

Li Yan¹²³^ORCID,Kalnay Eugenia¹⁴^ORCID,Motesharrei Safa¹⁴⁵^ORCID,Rivas Jorge,Kucharski Fred⁶,Kirk-Davidoff Daniel¹^ORCID,Bach Eviatar¹⁴^ORCID,Zeng Ning¹⁷^ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

2. Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

3. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resources Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.

4. Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

5. Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

6. Earth System Physics Section, Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste I-34100, Italy.

7. LASG, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100029, China.

Abstract

More energy, more rain Energy generation by wind and solar farms could reduce carbon emissions and thus mitigate anthropogenic climate change. But is this its only benefit? Li et al. conducted experiments using a climate model to show that the installation of large-scale wind and solar power generation facilities in the Sahara could cause more local rainfall, particularly in the neighboring Sahel region. This effect, caused by a combination of increased surface drag and reduced albedo, could increase coverage by vegetation, creating a positive feedback that would further increase rainfall. Science , this issue p. 1019

Funder

Lev Gandin funding

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Subject

Multidisciplinary

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