Categories: Technology

Wind farms raise ground temperatures, could possibly affect local weather

Ireland generates enough electricity from wind to power 1.3 million homes

Wind farms can raise ground temperatures in their immediate locality, which could lead to a “noticeable” impact on local and regional weather and climates, research suggests.

Researchers in Texas analysed nine years of temperature data between 2003 and 2011 over a mid-central region in the southern state where four of the world’s largest wind farms are situated. They discovered a “significant warming trend” of up to 0.72 degree celsius per decade of ground temperatures around wind farms when compared to nearby non-wind-farm regions.

This warming trend is most obvious at night when the air above the ground tends to be warmer than the ground itself. Wind turbines simply pull warmer air from above and mix this with the colder air below, raising temperatures in the process.

Researchers believe that this warming trend may not be mirrored to the same degree across over wind farms and regions, and that the warming effect would likely reach a limit if the number of wind turbines in a given farm did not increase.

The research team is now expanding its study approach to other wind farms and will build models to better “understand the physical processes and mechanisms driving the interactions of wind turbines and the atmospheric layer near the surface”.

Via: BBC News

Albizu Garcia

Albizu Garcia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gain -- a marketing technology company that automates the social media and content publishing workflow for agencies and social media managers, their clients and anyone working in teams.

Recent Posts

This AI Copilot Doesn’t Wait for Prompts — It Thinks Like a Hacker

Hey HackerNoon, it’s Kuwguap again. A while back, I wrote about building RAWPA, my AI…

3 days ago

How Humanity Engineered Thought: From Ancient Fire Circles to ChatGPT

Delivering truth was never about facts. Throughout history, from traditions to search engines and now…

3 days ago

People who grow up around robots may develop feelings for them, lose ability to socialize: WEF ‘Summer Davos’

Will we merge ourselves so intimately with technology that it becomes so much a part…

4 days ago

City of Seville welcomes the return of Techstars Startup Weekend

Techstars Startup Weekend Seville has announced that it will celebrate its 29th edition this June…

5 days ago

Meet agentic AI: Your AI agent just leveled up to teammate (Brains Byte Back Podcast)

You’ve probably been coming across the term “agentic AI” a lot more recently, and in…

6 days ago