Your post has been removed for the following reason:
>2) Maintain scientific integrity
>We do not expect peer review, but we do expect a level of scientific rigour in submissions. Specifically, the article significantly misrepresents the research it is about.
This reads like a 4th grade book report. And every link in the “article” leads to another “article” written by the same author. It’s as if they are trying to spam us or something…
This reminds me of this author who would make these outlandish claims but footnote them with a source. But the source was from another book he wrote where he would footnote that linking, circularly back to the original! That’s not how sources work!
It's a common tactic to increase your SEO (search engine optimization) and lead to more clicks on your website from sources like Google. You essentially make that each article in your website links to a few more articles from you. It's annoying as heck. Makes you wonder how much of the traffic is human anyway. The modern internet is vandalized more and more these days.
I think I found the right paper. Here is a better article on it: https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-solar-farms-could-provoke-rainclouds-desert
And the original paper: https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/15/109/2024/
The OP is terribly misrepresenting the research. I had to double check because it makes so little sense. The actual work
Is entirely based on computer simulations using the WRF weather model
Is focused on the UAE, not the Sahara
Proposes “artificial black surfaces” (solar panels or black-painted material) as a deliberate geoengineering proposal to potentially create rainfall
"The Paris Agreement saw the world’s leaders come together, well, at least most of them, to find solutions to the climate crisis the world faces.
Many nations committed to drastic reductions in emissions at the now iconic event in Paris, but most disagreed on the best method to reduce our collective carbon footprint. Some, like the UK, opted to go for wind power. Others, or more accurately, most of them, decided to go for the solar power sector.
Solar power has since come to dominate the world due to its accessibility for the average person.
...
The article published in Science has detailed how massive solar arrays in the Sahara Desert have started to trigger increased rainfall and vegetation growth.
They drastically lower the temperature around the sand that they sit on, effectively “greening” the desert. As the warm air around the panels has nowhere else to go but up, they naturally form massive rainclouds in a part of the world known for its dryness.
This awakening of the desert leads to oases of life that could “green” the desert as more solar panel farms are built.
We know that solar power systems can light up our homes, but nobody would have thought that they could actually create rainclouds and near-perfect conditions for life to thrive in the deserts of the world."
This makes me wonder if strategic placement could terraform deserts into livable areas. Although, I guess the downside would be some billionaire just ruining it anyways.
The air it so hot that it can carry a lot of water as gas without releasing it. (With the high temperature, the relative humidity might even still be low, or something?) By making a local cool spot, the air becomes cool enough that it cannot carry the water and must release it by condensation.
This also means that the mass of air passing by can become robbed of water, and so when it moves on to another more naturally cool area (e.g. it is pushed up the side of a mountain), it will not release as much water at that location. So a significant harvest of water in hot lowland areas due to solar panels can deprive a mountainside of its usual allotment of rain. (this is a total guess on my part, but it's not a bad guess)
If the water harvest is significant, it would mean drought for areas that have become populated by people who depended on the delivery of rain. It could also mean that rainwater will not be replenishing the mountain watersheds that themselves supply lakes and rivers and wells.
I would be interested to see if it actually boosted energy generation. One of the larger issues of solar in hot climates is that they dramatically lose efficiency when they are too hot. High UV days with reasonable cloud cover can produce more energy than clear skies, provided the panels are able to cool a little better.
Great thought. The other kicker to clouds and rain is they help clean off the panels from the silt and sand that builds up from blowing across the desert. Thus making their generation better as well.
That's an obscenely wordy article. Scroll down far enough, it eventually says:
>The article published in Science has detailed how massive solar arrays in the Sahara Desert have started to trigger increased rainfall and vegetation growth.
>They drastically lower the temperature around the sand that they sit on, effectively “greening” the desert. As the warm air around the panels has nowhere else to go but up, they naturally form massive rainclouds in a part of the world known for its dryness.
How is it good news? We have literally no idea how this could affect the global climate. It in fact could be exactly why this summer has been overwhelmingly hotter than most on record.
You can not, as a random uneducated person deduce that rainfall in a desert is good.
As soon as climatologists(is that a thing?) Unanimously agree with your idea, we have to proceed with extreme caution.
Idk if rainfall in a desert is good or bad but I think we’ve already fucked around enough to find out anyway. We should go with the solution we have and if there are unintended consequences we will cross that bridge when we get to it
That’s already going to happen with existing climate change. We don’t have time to nitpick about solutions. We have to do what we can with the knowledge we have. In my view, we should install as many solar panels as possible in as many places as possible AND ALSO research into the unintended side effects while we do it.
Climate interventions and geoengineering are active research areas. There are a lot of results already, largely from computer models because we don’t want to do anything harmful to our one and only Earth. Ideas similar to this one that you might be interested in are cloud seeding, which is more about weather manipulation, and stratospheric aerosol injection, which has a lot of benefits and likely very serious negatives too.
These questions all need way more funding. An important thing to keep in mind, that the others were getting at, is that we already are performing an uncontrolled intervention/experiment on our climate. My personal opinion is that geoengineering shouldn’t be so daunting then, especially considering how critical the problem is. Of course we need to be very careful and learn everything we can, which costs money.
I’m not sure why you said that to me but it’s not actually true. Here is the original paper the article is about: https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/15/109/2024/. The experiments were all done via computer models and were very much intentionally conducted. The posted article is pretty badly written though so Inunderstand the confusion.
I understand that I'm naive on the subject, but I for one like that we have some potential to learn something from this. Whether we can use it or not is of course up for debate (yes, by real scientists, not you and I), but the knowledge may be valuable regardless.
I'm also pleased to hear that perhaps we can contribute something positive instead of just taking from our environment as per usual.
Lastly, as a random person on the internet, I choose optimism for this one little piece of news in a world filled with chaos and suffering. You are free to make of it what you will!
The site doesn’t explain shit - found this on another site :
“Cities do an accidental version of this all the time. Asphalt and concrete soak up more heat than grass and dirt, which is why a downtown core runs hotter than the suburbs around it, and that extra heat can nudge rainfall downwind.
Dark solar panels do the same trick, just more so. They are built to absorb sunlight rather than bounce it back, so a big enough array becomes an artificial hot patch sitting in the middle of a cool, reflective desert.
The bigger the temperature gap between the panels and the sand around them, the harder the air gets shoved upward. Get the updraft strong enough, hand it a supply of moist air, and in theory you have the front end of a rain cloud.”
That is cool but clicked on a link to another article from that page and got a full screen popup with no x to close it out. Won’t be returning to that site.
Ok question, how many solar panels in the Sahara until it negatively affects the biome? Like, in the future, are we gonna be struggling to save the desert wildlife because of this?
I’m certainly for alt power and solar in particular. I’m just genuinely curious.
Interesting thanks! I live in the Caribbean and we get sand blown in from the Sahara(yes really). I guess we would lose some of our beaches in that case but also the associated allergies haha.
The Dune books talked about reducing desertification with dew harvesters and wind traps which were ultimately about capturing tiny amounts of condensation.
That's fantastic news for extraterrestrial terraforming though. Start with the panels while you set up a base colony, and over time the potential is there for the area to improve meterologically
I mean it’s cool that they’re doing this is arid areas but, in areas that are already greened and have a thriving ecosystem they are harming the environments and animals that live there. Such as scrubland fields, reclaimed pasture areas, etc. These are common environments to find them in my area and the negative consequences are well documented. The truth is that any large scale changes made by humans are going to have unintended negative and maybe positive effects too. We should start by trying to do the least harm while providing for our own needs and also learn from our mistakes and try to better our solutions.
In the end who cares about some stupid desert animal if we can power more human growth and fuck over another ecosystem! This one is on the other side of the world from NA so who cares? /s
EverythingScience-ModTeam | 7 hours ago
Your post has been removed for the following reason:
>2) Maintain scientific integrity
>We do not expect peer review, but we do expect a level of scientific rigour in submissions. Specifically, the article significantly misrepresents the research it is about.
ic6man | 8 hours ago
This reads like a 4th grade book report. And every link in the “article” leads to another “article” written by the same author. It’s as if they are trying to spam us or something…
werfertt | 7 hours ago
This reminds me of this author who would make these outlandish claims but footnote them with a source. But the source was from another book he wrote where he would footnote that linking, circularly back to the original! That’s not how sources work!
IBeDumbAndSlow | 7 hours ago
Correct! But it is how "sources" work! /s
Technical_savoir | 7 hours ago
This is absolutely hilarious
setbg | 7 hours ago
It's a common tactic to increase your SEO (search engine optimization) and lead to more clicks on your website from sources like Google. You essentially make that each article in your website links to a few more articles from you. It's annoying as heck. Makes you wonder how much of the traffic is human anyway. The modern internet is vandalized more and more these days.
theArtOfProgramming | 7 hours ago
I think I found the right paper. Here is a better article on it: https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-solar-farms-could-provoke-rainclouds-desert
And the original paper: https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/15/109/2024/
The OP is terribly misrepresenting the research. I had to double check because it makes so little sense. The actual work
geo38 | 7 hours ago
Yep, I posted a track back to the source and pointed out that OP's article is making things up:
https://old.reddit.com/r/EverythingScience/comments/1ubr207/solar_panels_are_creating_a_strange_effect_by/osyl81p/
[OP] DavidIsIt | 8 hours ago
From the article:
"The Paris Agreement saw the world’s leaders come together, well, at least most of them, to find solutions to the climate crisis the world faces.
Many nations committed to drastic reductions in emissions at the now iconic event in Paris, but most disagreed on the best method to reduce our collective carbon footprint. Some, like the UK, opted to go for wind power. Others, or more accurately, most of them, decided to go for the solar power sector.
Solar power has since come to dominate the world due to its accessibility for the average person.
...
The article published in Science has detailed how massive solar arrays in the Sahara Desert have started to trigger increased rainfall and vegetation growth.
They drastically lower the temperature around the sand that they sit on, effectively “greening” the desert. As the warm air around the panels has nowhere else to go but up, they naturally form massive rainclouds in a part of the world known for its dryness.
This awakening of the desert leads to oases of life that could “green” the desert as more solar panel farms are built.
We know that solar power systems can light up our homes, but nobody would have thought that they could actually create rainclouds and near-perfect conditions for life to thrive in the deserts of the world."
DoomedOrbital | 8 hours ago
Huh. What a beautiful unintended consequence.
PennytheWiser215 | 8 hours ago
This makes me wonder if strategic placement could terraform deserts into livable areas. Although, I guess the downside would be some billionaire just ruining it anyways.
errie_tholluxe | 8 hours ago
Ya know Mark, that green space over there is totally devaluing our green space over here, we should create a HOA.
Azkahn616 | 7 hours ago
It’s the lack of water that makes a desert not heat. Where is the water coming from?
Unique-Coffee5087 | 7 hours ago
The air it so hot that it can carry a lot of water as gas without releasing it. (With the high temperature, the relative humidity might even still be low, or something?) By making a local cool spot, the air becomes cool enough that it cannot carry the water and must release it by condensation.
This also means that the mass of air passing by can become robbed of water, and so when it moves on to another more naturally cool area (e.g. it is pushed up the side of a mountain), it will not release as much water at that location. So a significant harvest of water in hot lowland areas due to solar panels can deprive a mountainside of its usual allotment of rain. (this is a total guess on my part, but it's not a bad guess)
If the water harvest is significant, it would mean drought for areas that have become populated by people who depended on the delivery of rain. It could also mean that rainwater will not be replenishing the mountain watersheds that themselves supply lakes and rivers and wells.
jbbarajas | 8 hours ago
Though I hope the frequency of cloud formation doesn't drastically affect the energy production of the panels
meisangry2 | 8 hours ago
I would be interested to see if it actually boosted energy generation. One of the larger issues of solar in hot climates is that they dramatically lose efficiency when they are too hot. High UV days with reasonable cloud cover can produce more energy than clear skies, provided the panels are able to cool a little better.
mrszubris | 8 hours ago
An excellent point.
Blastmeaway | 7 hours ago
Great thought. The other kicker to clouds and rain is they help clean off the panels from the silt and sand that builds up from blowing across the desert. Thus making their generation better as well.
ikonoclasm | 7 hours ago
That's what I was thinking. Thermal regulation and self-cleaning, in addition to greening the desert? It's almost too good to be true.
mothandravenstudio | 8 hours ago
Solar generation actually does worse when under unrelenting sun/heat.
[OP] DavidIsIt | 8 hours ago
Indeed!
fmgiii | 8 hours ago
Good intentions cause the conditions for more good intentions, which further cause the conditions for more...you get the idea. Great thought.
Watarid0ri | 8 hours ago
... But seriously, this is pretty amazing.
CariniFluff | 7 hours ago
Rainclouds wash dust and sand off the panels and cools them, both increasing efficiency.
Win-win
Watarid0ri | 7 hours ago
This, plus I'm sure the latitude would be more important than cloud cover, anyway.
oroborus68 | 8 hours ago
Eighth grader trying to win the flowery prose award?
KaizenHour | 8 hours ago
That's an obscenely wordy article. Scroll down far enough, it eventually says:
>The article published in Science has detailed how massive solar arrays in the Sahara Desert have started to trigger increased rainfall and vegetation growth.
>They drastically lower the temperature around the sand that they sit on, effectively “greening” the desert. As the warm air around the panels has nowhere else to go but up, they naturally form massive rainclouds in a part of the world known for its dryness.
tmackle | 8 hours ago
Just really happy to hear some good news about the climate crisis. How wonderful!
help-its-inside-me | 8 hours ago
How is it good news? We have literally no idea how this could affect the global climate. It in fact could be exactly why this summer has been overwhelmingly hotter than most on record.
You can not, as a random uneducated person deduce that rainfall in a desert is good.
As soon as climatologists(is that a thing?) Unanimously agree with your idea, we have to proceed with extreme caution.
deezdanglin | 8 hours ago
Speaking of uneducated, yes Climatology has its own branch of science. And yes, one can get a degree in it.
Groovychick1978 | 8 hours ago
"As soon as climatologists(is that a thing?)"
Okay, thank you for letting us know that we can absolutely ignore any words out of your mouth.
slide_into_my_BM | 8 hours ago
Or, you know, it could be the 2 centuries of pumping hydrocarbons into the atmosphere…
Main-Company-5946 | 8 hours ago
Idk if rainfall in a desert is good or bad but I think we’ve already fucked around enough to find out anyway. We should go with the solution we have and if there are unintended consequences we will cross that bridge when we get to it
help-its-inside-me | 8 hours ago
What if the consequences are irreversible and cause the whole planet to suffer near instantly?
Climate change is no joke. Making changes without research can be extremely dangerous.
Main-Company-5946 | 8 hours ago
That’s already going to happen with existing climate change. We don’t have time to nitpick about solutions. We have to do what we can with the knowledge we have. In my view, we should install as many solar panels as possible in as many places as possible AND ALSO research into the unintended side effects while we do it.
theArtOfProgramming | 7 hours ago
Climate interventions and geoengineering are active research areas. There are a lot of results already, largely from computer models because we don’t want to do anything harmful to our one and only Earth. Ideas similar to this one that you might be interested in are cloud seeding, which is more about weather manipulation, and stratospheric aerosol injection, which has a lot of benefits and likely very serious negatives too.
These questions all need way more funding. An important thing to keep in mind, that the others were getting at, is that we already are performing an uncontrolled intervention/experiment on our climate. My personal opinion is that geoengineering shouldn’t be so daunting then, especially considering how critical the problem is. Of course we need to be very careful and learn everything we can, which costs money.
help-its-inside-me | 7 hours ago
This was an unintended outcome. There was no intention of this or research into it though
theArtOfProgramming | 7 hours ago
I’m not sure why you said that to me but it’s not actually true. Here is the original paper the article is about: https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/15/109/2024/. The experiments were all done via computer models and were very much intentionally conducted. The posted article is pretty badly written though so Inunderstand the confusion.
LongjumpingJaguar308 | 7 hours ago
We have increased desertification through our activities, so turning that around is a decent side effect.
help-its-inside-me | 7 hours ago
Warming up the poles is bad, how do we know calling down the equator and/or deserts is good?
tmackle | 7 hours ago
I understand that I'm naive on the subject, but I for one like that we have some potential to learn something from this. Whether we can use it or not is of course up for debate (yes, by real scientists, not you and I), but the knowledge may be valuable regardless.
I'm also pleased to hear that perhaps we can contribute something positive instead of just taking from our environment as per usual.
Lastly, as a random person on the internet, I choose optimism for this one little piece of news in a world filled with chaos and suffering. You are free to make of it what you will!
icharming | 8 hours ago
The site doesn’t explain shit - found this on another site :
“Cities do an accidental version of this all the time. Asphalt and concrete soak up more heat than grass and dirt, which is why a downtown core runs hotter than the suburbs around it, and that extra heat can nudge rainfall downwind.
Dark solar panels do the same trick, just more so. They are built to absorb sunlight rather than bounce it back, so a big enough array becomes an artificial hot patch sitting in the middle of a cool, reflective desert.
The bigger the temperature gap between the panels and the sand around them, the harder the air gets shoved upward. Get the updraft strong enough, hand it a supply of moist air, and in theory you have the front end of a rain cloud.”
Source - https://www.autonocion.com/us/solar-farm-desert-uae-german/
TNexpat | 8 hours ago
That is cool but clicked on a link to another article from that page and got a full screen popup with no x to close it out. Won’t be returning to that site.
pikapp336 | 8 hours ago
Ok question, how many solar panels in the Sahara until it negatively affects the biome? Like, in the future, are we gonna be struggling to save the desert wildlife because of this?
I’m certainly for alt power and solar in particular. I’m just genuinely curious.
Evilsushione | 7 hours ago
The Sahara is only about 10,000 years old maybe less. Usually life is flexible enough to handle those kinds of changes that make it more habitable.
Mrslinkydragon | 7 hours ago
If the Sahara goes green again, we will get more dragon trees!
pikapp336 | 6 hours ago
Interesting thanks! I live in the Caribbean and we get sand blown in from the Sahara(yes really). I guess we would lose some of our beaches in that case but also the associated allergies haha.
TonaldDiberJasicDump | 8 hours ago
So the consequence of large solar farms is reduced the efficiency of the solar farm because they create clouds that block out the sun?
Evil_Mini_Cake | 8 hours ago
The Dune books talked about reducing desertification with dew harvesters and wind traps which were ultimately about capturing tiny amounts of condensation.
Unique-Coffee5087 | 7 hours ago
To maintain them you need a droid that can speak Bocce.
Evil_Mini_Cake | 17 minutes ago
Probably the binary language of moisture vaporators too.
DifficultWing2453 | 7 hours ago
Article is BS. Read the original article: https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-solar-farms-could-provoke-rainclouds-desert
The rain-making effect is just modeled and not yet replicated in the real world.
This article is good climate news fantasy.
physwm2501 | 8 hours ago
Exactly what massive solar installations need.... Clouds
trying3216 | 7 hours ago
If the panels green the desert that’s climate change. So now we’re calling that good? What effect will that have on desert animals?
And maybe it is good. Maybe other aspects of climate change are good.
What is the ideal temperature of the planet?
Mrslinkydragon | 7 hours ago
Its as if lowering the albedo of an area will have effects on the area ...
Same as why thunder storms are worse over shopping centres in the US
(Teded did a video on this)
WaltGazaWorld | 7 hours ago
That's fantastic news for extraterrestrial terraforming though. Start with the panels while you set up a base colony, and over time the potential is there for the area to improve meterologically
geo38 | 7 hours ago
This article is a rehash (and exaggeration) of https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-solar-farms-could-provoke-rainclouds-desert
And that science.org post comes from this January 2024 research paper: https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/15/109/2024/
Nowhere is the title of this post "solar panels are creating" supported.
This research is suggesting a possible result of solar panels in the desert.
GeronimoHero | 7 hours ago
I mean it’s cool that they’re doing this is arid areas but, in areas that are already greened and have a thriving ecosystem they are harming the environments and animals that live there. Such as scrubland fields, reclaimed pasture areas, etc. These are common environments to find them in my area and the negative consequences are well documented. The truth is that any large scale changes made by humans are going to have unintended negative and maybe positive effects too. We should start by trying to do the least harm while providing for our own needs and also learn from our mistakes and try to better our solutions.
Fenweekooo | 7 hours ago
In the end who cares about some stupid desert animal if we can power more human growth and fuck over another ecosystem! This one is on the other side of the world from NA so who cares? /s