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posted by mrpg on Friday September 07 2018, @04:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the and-later-what? dept.

ScienceDaily:

Wind and solar farms are known to have local effects on heat, humidity and other factors that may be beneficial -- or detrimental -- to the regions in which they are situated. A new climate-modeling study finds that a massive wind and solar installation in the Sahara Desert and neighboring Sahel would increase local temperature, precipitation and vegetation. Overall, the researchers report, the effects would likely benefit the region.

The study, reported in the journal Science, is among the first to model the climate effects of wind and solar installations while taking into account how vegetation responds to changes in heat and precipitation, said lead author Yan Li, a postdoctoral researcher in natural resources and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois.

"Previous modeling studies have shown that large-scale wind and solar farms can produce significant climate change at continental scales," Li said. "But the lack of vegetation feedbacks could make the modeled climate impacts very different from their actual behavior.

Also at BBC.

Journal Reference:
Yan Li, Eugenia Kalnay, Safa Motesharrei, Jorge Rivas, Fred Kucharski, Daniel Kirk-Davidoff, Eviatar Bach, Ning Zeng. Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation. Science, 2018; 361 (6406): 1019 DOI: 10.1126/science.aar5629


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 07 2018, @06:16PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 07 2018, @06:16PM (#731855)

    the photovoltaics transform one form of energy into another, so from "heat rays" into "electricity".
    also they shade the floor, were most of the water falling from the sky goes ...

    plants do something similar: "heat rays" and water gets transformed into "woody mass".
      i am still trying to teach the monthly gardener help that mowing the lawn in the middle of the day is BAD. the cut grass blade is DAMAGED and "bleeds" out water. cut it in the late afternoon.
    also not to cut when there's no rain in sight for weeks; the unsightly long grass covers the floor and provides shade so that the ground doesn't lose water soo much... but NOOO, the grass must be cut because it is not "pretty" ...

    anyways, cover/shade the ground so it loses less water and use the magic of photovoltaics to transform some of the "heat rays" into something else.
    also, all life prefers cold water, preferably less then 23 deg. C.
    life grows better in "coolish" water then hot water (see boiling pot).
    thus if you have water, let it flow and keep it cool/shaded.

    for the metal-robot-physics-minded, you can start calculating how much cooler a regular shaded area -vs- a (electricity producing) photovoltics shaded area is. were did the heat go?
    next: place a heat-exchanger (air-con) in the area ... calculate and measure?

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  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday September 08 2018, @04:12AM

    by anubi (2828) on Saturday September 08 2018, @04:12AM (#732040) Journal

    were did the heat go?
    next: place a heat-exchanger (air-con) in the area ... calculate and measure?

    Unfortunately you cannot make heat "go away", you can only move it somewhere else, and you always end up with more heat overall than before, no matter what you do.

    ( The laws of thermodynamics are a bitch here... No free lunch... everything I get here, I gotta pay somewhere else. )

    Maybe if excess heat could be routed to the black PV arrays at night, the heat could be beamed off into deep space ( blackbody radiation ). While that does nothing for the total heat picture of the Universe, it does get some off the Earth, just as an air conditioner will make your house more comfortable, but heats up your neighborhood a little bit to do it.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]