20240216
But according to a new modeling study, there may be another way to stir up a rainmaker: with city-size solar farms that create their own weather. The heat from large expanses of dark solar panels can cause updrafts that, in the right conditions, lead to rainstorms, providing water for tens of thousands of people. “Some solar farms are getting up to the right size right now,” says Oliver Branch, a climate scientist at the University of Hohenheim who led the work, published last week in the journal Earth System Dynamics. “Maybe it’s not science fiction that we can produce this effect.”
In a 2020 study, researchers found that implausibly large solar farms, taking up more than 1 million square kilometers in the Sahara desert, could boost local rainfall and cause vegetation to flourish.