Air turbulence created by wind farms in Texas have caused a slight increase in nighttime surface temperatures, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change on Sunday, April 29. However, clean energy analysts say the study shows surface temperature has no effect on climate change and that the study's findings have been largely misconstrued by the media.
"Our results show a significant warming trend of up to 0.72°C per decade, particularly at night-time, over wind farms relative to nearby non-wind-farm regions. We attribute this warming primarily to wind farms as its spatial pattern and magnitude couples very well with the geographic distribution of wind turbines," the study, headed by State University of New York, Albany Associate Professor Liming Zhou, states.
But clean energy activists say the study's findings have been largely misunderstood or misrepresented by the media. In fact, in a State University of New York, Albany press release announcing the report, Dr. Zhou said, "the estimated warming trends only apply to the study region and to the study period, and thus should not be interpolated linearly into other regions (e.g., globally) or over longer periods (e.g., for another 20 years)."
In a Q+A section attached to the original study, Dr. Zhou added, "Very likely, the wind turbines do not create a net warming of the air and instead only redistribute the air's heat near the surface (the turbine itself does not generate any heat), which is fundamentally different from the large scale warming effect caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases due to the burning of fossil fuels."
The study looked at satellite data for the period of 2003-2011 over a region in west-central Texas, where four of the world's largest wind farms are located.
Clean energy activists and climate scientists are now working to reverse the negative press garnered by the report.
"Wind power is going to be a part of the solution to the climate change, air pollution and energy security problems," Professor Somnath Baidya Roy at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, a co-author of the study, said. "Understanding the impacts of wind farms is critical for developing efficient adaptation and management strategies to ensure the long-term sustainability of wind power."
Last year, 46,919 megawatts of wind turbine capacity were installed in the United States, about one fifth of the world's wind power. According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the wind power industry brought in more than $20 billion in investments from the private sector last year, with the majority of the funds going to constructing new wind farms and producing more efficient wind turbines.
Twenty states are now generating more than 5 percent of their electricity from non-hydro renewables, according to the Energy Information Administration, and a record five states received more than 10 percent of their electricity from wind in 2011.
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