Chinese researchers have found that solar power plants can reduce evaporation and wind speeds in the Gobi Desert while increasing soil relative humidity, according to simulations of several different emission scenarios.
Desert solar power plants can increase humidity while reducing wind speed and evaporation. Researchers from the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) recently published: “Solar PV plants planned for China’s Gobi deserts would reduce evaporation and wind”. in Solar energy. Researchers claim that the local climate effects of solar parks could be similar if not stronger than the effects caused by climate change.
To represent a typical summer/winter climate, the team analyzed 20 different five-year July and January periods between 2008 and 2062.
“These favorable changes in humidity, evaporation, and wind speed, as predicted in this study, would improve ecological conditions, which is in line with previous reports of strong vegetation growth in PV plants established in arid climates,” they said. .
Research suggests that the regional coverage of solar power plants affects the climate more than their intensity.
“Therefore, future work is needed to solve this problem by performing long-term simulations in different scenarios, and also the dependence of the effects caused by PV on climate and soil conditions should be taken into account,” the researchers stated.
