NOTE: An update has been added below, using the press release that came out today after the news stories yesterday.
While ironic that something designed to reduce CO2 emissions (and presumably warming)is actually producing warming around it, this isn’t really any big surprise. Orchardists and vineyard operators in California have been using motor driven wind turbines to elevate local temperatures to save crops from frost for over half a century. What is different here is the scale of nighttime warming, large enough to be visible on MODIS satellite imagery thanks to large scale wind farms.
Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. and associates have been doing research along these lines for quite some time, and has this summary on some recent research.
From Louise Gray in the Telegraph:
Wind farms can cause climate change, according to new research, that shows for the first time the new technology is already pushing up temperatures.
Usually at night the air closer to the ground becomes colder when the sun goes down and the earth cools. But on huge wind farms the motion of the turbines mixes the air higher in the atmosphere that is warmer, pushing up the overall temperature.
Satellite data over a large area in Texas, that is now covered by four of the world’s largest wind farms, found that over a decade the local temperature went up by almost 1C as more turbines are built. This could have long term effects on wildlife living in the immediate areas of larger wind farms. It could also affect regional weather patterns as warmer areas affect the formation of cloud and even wind speeds.
Full story here:
Here’s the paper:
Zhou, Liming, Yuhong Tian, Somnath Baidya Roy, Chris Thorncroft, Lance F. Bosart and Yuanlong Hu 2012: Impacts of wind farms on land surface temperature. Nature Climate Chnage. doi:10.1038/nclimate1505
And the abstract (bold mine):
The wind industry in the United States has experienced a remarkably rapid expansion of capacity in recent years and this fast growth is expected to continue in the future. While converting wind’s kinetic energy into electricity, wind turbines modify surface–atmosphere exchanges and the transfer of energy, momentum, mass and moisture within the atmosphere. These changes, if spatially large enough, may have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate.
Here we present observational evidence for such impacts based on analyses of 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. 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.
h/t to WUWT reader Andrew Kissling
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UPDATE: 4/30/12:30PM PST The press release came out this morning, including this image:
Temperature Differences near Wind Farms
This graph shows the night-time land surface temperature differences near wind farms between 2010 and 2013. Credit: Liming Zhou et al., Nature Climate Change
Here’s the PR:
Scientists find night-warming effect over large wind farms in Texas
Wind turbines interact with atmospheric boundary layer near the surface
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  IMAGE:Wind farms are numerous in parts of Texas; scientists report new results on their effects.Click here for more information. |
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Large wind farms in certain areas in the United States appear to affect local land surface temperatures, according to a paper published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The study, led by Liming Zhou, an atmospheric scientist at the State University of New York- (SUNY) Albany, provides insights about the possible effects of wind farms.
The results could be important for developing efficient adaptation and management strategies to ensure long-term sustainability of wind power.
“This study indicates that land surface temperatures have warmed in the vicinity of large wind farms in west-central Texas, especially at night,” says Anjuli Bamzai, program director in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which funded the research.
“The observations and analyses are for a relatively short period, but raise important issues that deserve attention as we move toward an era of rapid growth in wind farms in our quest for alternate energy sources.”
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 IMAGE:This graph shows the night-time land surface temperature differences near wind farms between 2010 and 2013.Click here for more information. |
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Considerable research has linked the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels with rising global temperatures.
Consequently, many nations are moving toward cleaner sources of renewable energy such as wind turbines. Generating wind power creates no emissions, uses no water and is likely “green.”
“We need to better understand the system with observations, and better describe and model the complex processes involved, to predict how wind farms may affect future weather and climate,” said Zhou.
There have been a growing number of studies of wind farm effects on weather and climate, primarily using numerical models due to the lack of observations over wind farms.
As numerical models are computationally intensive and have uncertainties in simulating regional and local weather and climate, said Zhou, remote sensing is likely the most efficient and effective way to study wind farm effects over larger spatial and longer temporal scales.
To understand the potential impact of wind farms on local weather and climate, Zhou’s team analyzed satellite-derived land surface temperatures from regions around large wind farms in Texas for the period 2003-2011.
The researchers found a night-time warming effect over wind farms of up to 0.72 degrees Celsius per decade over the nine-year-period in which data were collected.
Because the spatial pattern of warming mirrors the geographic distribution of wind turbines, the scientists attribute the warming primarily to wind farms.
The year-to-year land surface temperature over wind farms shows a persistent upward trend from 2003 to 2011, consistent with the increasing number of operational wind turbines with time.
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 IMAGE:Wind farms dot the horizon in Lubbock County and other Texas areas.Click here for more information. |
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“This warming effect is most likely caused by the turbulence in turbine wakes acting like fans to pull down warmer near-surface air from higher altitudes at night,” said Somnath Baidya Roy of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a co-author of the paper.
While the warming effect reported is local and small compared to the strong background year-to-year land surface temperature variation, the authors believe that this work draws attention to an important scientific issue that requires further investigation.
“The estimated warming trends only apply to the study region and to the study period, and thus should not be interpolated into other regions, globally or over longer periods,” Zhou said. “For a given wind farm, once there are no new wind turbines added, the warming effect may reach a stable level.”
The study represents a first step in exploring the potential of using satellite data to quantify the possible effects of the development of big wind farms on weather and climate, said Chris Thorncroft of SUNY-Albany, a co-author of the paper.
“We’re expanding this approach to other wind farms,” said Thorncroft, “and building models to understand the physical processes and mechanisms driving the interactions of wind turbines and the atmosphere boundary layer near the surface.”
Other authors of the paper include Lance Bosart at SUNY-Albany, Yuhong Tian of NOAA, and Yuanlong Hu at Terra-Gen Power LLC in San Diego, Calif.
Imagine if thermometers were placed at expanding wind farms over the years. When some would have noticed there seemed to be an unusual warming trend compared to “rural” areas without them, we’d be told it was thoroughly investigated by statistical analysis or wind patterns and found to be negligible with no effect on “global” trends.
Seems to me this effect could be studied by looking at aerial or satellite photos of windfarm installations, and adjacent land not so disturbed, and looking for visible differences in the extent of frost and/or snow during the freeze-up and break-up periods in Fall and Spring. If a windfarm causes local warming, one might expect a visible frost-free wake down-wind of the turbines on a night when it was just cold enough to cause frost in the surrounding countryside.
When you remove energy from a working fluid its temperature goes down. Basic thermodynamics. Any apparent temperature increase is from vertical mixing and is purely local.
David Jones says:
April 30, 2012 at 12:16 am
“The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again!!”
You are correct sir…and as people have pointed out The First Law of Thermodynamics is at play as well, I think…maybe The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics too. 😉
Re: Donald L. Klipstein 7:45 am and Bob Maginnis 8:24 am
This study is actually quite instructive about the heat flow mechanic going on. The headline should be changed to: Wind Farms can cause warming of ground and ground based thermometers while silmultaneously cooling the atmosphere. The thermometers are leading us astray again. Is this a Rural Heat Island effect?
Here is a 1961 technical article on wind machines and how they reduce frost damage:
http://www.fshs.org/Proceedings/Password%20Protected/1961%20Vol.%2074/112-118%20%28GRIFFITHS%29.pdf
Some of the research was done in a dirigible hanger in Texas.
I haven’t read through all of the comments so this might have already been stated. I’m not sure that this is all so important, as the amount of heat is unchanged, i.e. calories. All that it speaks to is that the heat is moved to somewhere that it wasn’t previously at a certain point in time. But does it affect weather all that much? Personally, I doubt it as the heat and cold don’t seem to be displaced very much. Methinks a LOT more research is going to be needed. It should be interesting to await such research though.
Got me thinking about aircraft landings and take-offs at airports and thermoimeters. Just a thought.
wmconnolley says:
April 30, 2012 at 7:02 am
I think Wayne is one step ahead of you and is looking at the implications of “the effect.” If the effect is that the inversion doesn’t breaks down or doesn’t form, the paper says one result is that the low temperature goes up. I don’t think you have any complaint with that. Wayne is saying that ground moisture will be lost too. I don’t have any complaint with that.
wmconnolley says:
April 30, 2012 at 7:02 am
> Ric Werme says: wmconnolley says: No, its caused by mixed down air from higher up. wayne says:… They create turbulence breaking the smooth surface skin laminar flow which increases soil evaporation
> While Wayne may not have worded things quite right, exactly how is the air inversion broken up without turbulence?
Wayne is wrong to think that evaporation is a significant part of the effect. The effect is the turbines mix down warmer air from above, on nights with an inversion (principally or entirely; I can’t see the paper either, so I’m not quite sure exactly what their results say).
William, I don’t think I am wrong, it is you instead. There is no warmer upper air on the average, there is such a thing called a lapse rate that guarantees, averaged, that the higher you go the colder it gets, day or night, averaged. You need to spend some time studying what is called radiosondes. During the winter and early spring you will see these inversions, when a warm mass of air moves into a frigid area but they are rather rare, when the temperature of upper air is actually warmer than that near the ground. That must be what you are envisioning.
On the long term if the windmills were mixing the air vertically, which it does, but is not this effect the paper is speaking of, the temperatures would be lower consistently near the surface, not warmer, a additional cooling. To be on the average warmer near the ground you need additional energy near the ground, and, mixing the cooler upper air is not the answer, it is dry conditions. And how does the area about wind farms get dry and therefore warmer at night? There is less evapo-transpiration of surface water, the main cooling process. Without the moisture the soil at the surface gets much higher in the day exaggerating this problem even more and more energy is pushed down by convection into the top soil to release during the nighttime.
No, William, I think you are thinking wrong and if the paper is blaming it on the cooler upper air mixing lower, they are wrong too. That is what I think, also never reading the complete paper, but nine of ten peer-reviewed papers are also wrong to some degree so nothing is new.
And I’m like Anthony, you need to climb off that high-horse you seem to keep yourself propped upon. I won’t throw insults at you if you don’t throw them at others.
Once again, it is the moisture we are screwing up with the wind farms and nothing good is going to come from them. When farms with windmills are proven to be where the bumper-crops are being produced without massive additional irrigation I will change my tune, I have always been a scientist, letters or not.
William, as you read the above, please change “pushed down by convection” to conduction. Caught that on my first glance after hitting “Post Comment”. Sometimes my fingers are typing in front of my thoughts! 😉
Nick Stokes;
No, none of the things you listed are permanent energy storages.>>>>
The exact same is true of CO2 Nick.
But you are missing the point. Wind IS a cooling process. What do you think causes wind in the first place? Daily heating/cooling due to the diurnal cycle causes expansion/contraction of the air mass which in turn flows from high pressure to low pressure. Interrupt the wind and you interrupt the cooling process.
Got me thinking about forests(tall trees causing wind turbulence),rocky outcropings,cliffs,large boulders(heat islands ?).Does all that remove heat from the atmosphere?to the surface?WUWT?
Thanks for all the interesting articles and comments
wmconnolley says:
April 30, 2012 at 6:33 am
Well, I’ll have to take a closer look at that page, but I do take Wikipedia pages on climate with a large grain of salt. There are a number of things worth arguing about, e.g. the first sentence:
There are several causes of an urban heat island (UHI). The principal reason for the nighttime warming is that buildings block surface heat from radiating into the relatively cold night sky.
While that might be “principal” in an urban canyon, several reports at WUWT have documented UHI effects in surprisingly small towns. It also talks about “concrete and asphalt” but not bricks. If you get a chance, please go through that section a line at a time and explain what I’m missing. Then we’ll return the favor with less urban settings with measurable UHI.
Even the time I spent in Pittsburgh wasn’t a pure urban environment. Instead of an urban canyon, CMU is located next to Schenley Park. I remember walking from the campus to Oakland for a midnight meal an feeling the cool, moist air flowing down the hill from the park while feeling the warmth radiating from the bricks and concrete of the buildings on the other side of Panther Hollow. Perhaps heat from asphalt to due to buildings scattering the heat radiated from that Wiki item. That should count as “blocked surface heat.”
” scale of nighttime warming, large enough to be visible on MODIS satellite imagery thanks to large scale wind farms.”
Dr. No would be proud of them!
Gore, Hansen, Mann, (et al) knowing man-made CO2 was not going to result in Global Warming as scammed; those fiends came up with an alternative, pro Gaia looking, scheme to raise earth’s temperatures.
wayne says: “Windmills are destructive in every respect.”
Don’t you mean ‘Bird Blenders’?
wayne says: > William, I don’t think I am wrong, it is you instead. There is no warmer upper air on the average, there is such a thing called a lapse rate that guarantees, averaged, that the higher you go the colder it gets, day or night, averaged.
Sigh. Yes, I know that. What you’ve failed to realise (perhaps excusably, if all you’re relying on is this post) is that the effect isn’t constant. It only occurs under particular conditions. You could do worse than read Black of the Beeb who says “At night, air above ground level tends to be warmer than the ground. Dr Zhou and his colleagues believe the turbine blades are simply stirring up the air, mixing warm and cold, and bringing some of the warmth down to ground level.”. Or, indeed, you could actually read what I’ve already said higher up, cos I’ve said this already.
So yes: on average, temperature decreases with height (well, nearly everywhere: it isn’t true over Antarctica in winter, or indeed on annual average). But it doesn’t always, which is why, errm, there is this thing called an inversion. But you’re wrong about the guarantee, as Antarctica proves.
> You need to spend some time studying what is called radiosondes…
Don’t try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs, you wet behind the ears puppy.
I only believe when I see who is representing the source of the investigation.. If this is presented by some that are “backed” by big oil I will more likely than not call shenanigans. Because it is like allowing monsanto to do their own investigation on whether their food is “good” or bad.
> Ric Werme says: … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island#Causes … e.g. the first sentence: “There are several causes of an urban heat island (UHI). The principal reason for the nighttime warming is that buildings block surface heat from radiating into the relatively cold night sky.” While that might be “principal” in an urban canyon, several reports at WUWT have documented UHI effects in surprisingly small towns.
Well, the wiki page comes with references, so potentially you can read those and verify its correct. If you want to discuss it, the obvious place to do so is on the wiki talk page (don’t worry, contrary to what some here might think, the place is not infested with demons and it is safe to visit; you can always leave). If you’ve got evidence to back up your “UHI effects are generally blamed on heat storage in bricks, concrete, and pavement being released at night” you could present it.
wmconnolley says:
April 30, 2012 at 6:33 am
> Not really, no. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island#Causes
Oh – I forgot to ask about one of your recent edit there. There was Wiki text:
Not all cities have a distinct urban heat island. Mitigation of the urban heat island effect can be accomplished through the use of [[green roof]]s and the use of lighter-colored surfaces in urban areas, which reflect more sunlight and absorb less heat. Despite concerns raised about its possible contribution to global warming {{Citation needed|date=September 2011}}, comparisons between urban and rural areas show that the urban heat island effects have little influence on global mean temperature trends.{{cite journal | doi = 10.1029/1998GL900322 | last1 = Peterson | first1 = T.C. | last2 = Gallo | first2 = K.P. | last3 = Lawrimore | first3 = J. | last4 = Owen | first4 = T.W. | last5 = Huang | first5 = A. | last6 = McKittrick | first6 = D.A. | year = 1999 | title = Global rural temperature trends | url = | journal = Geophysical Research Letters | volume = 26 | issue = 3| pages = 329–332 | bibcode=1999GeoRL..26..329P}} Recent qualitative speculations indicate that [[urban thermal plume]]s may contribute to variation in wind patterns that may influence the melting of arctic ice packs and thereby the cycle of ocean current.{{cite book |author=Anthony Rail |title=Urban Thermal Plumes |publisher=Kastell |location=Sudbury |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-9565215-0-7 |edition=1st}}
You moved the italicized part down, noting it “deserves its own para in lede” but you left alone the last sentence:
Fortunately someone else deleted it later, noting “Unqualified self-published crank, not available or reviewed anywhere, no information found about publisher either.” I’m disappointed you missed that one. Heck, it would have been a smaller edit – just remove that and put in a paragraph break. I wonder what effect wind turbines in Great Britain have on North Sea storms.
Reblogged this on TaJnB | TheAverageJoeNewsBlogg.
This just show once more how erroneous, irrelevant the way temperatures are measured.
> Ric Werme says:… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island#Causes …I forgot to ask about one of your recent edit there…
Indeed, you didn’t formally ask a question at all. But I think the question you meant to ask was: “WMC, so you made the article better, unlike RW who has never helped at all; but why didn’t you make it perfect?” Which is self-answering really.
REPLY: And the answer is… after the black marks you’ve given Wikipedia for your arrogant behavior there, many people don’t want to participate any more due to the bullying that you and a few others display there on the climate issue. The fact is that with many (but not all) climate articles, there aren’t stable references from one day to the next because there is so much tinkering going on. I think I speak for many in saying that we’d feel the climate articles would be more trustworthy if you weren’t involved. -Anthony
According to this article, wind turbines can extract humidity from the air.
Wind turbine creates water from thin air
By Eoghan Macguire, for CNN
updated 6:09 AM EDT, Mon April 30, 2012
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/29/world/eole-water-turbine/index.html
“Just now it costs between €500,000 ($660,000) and €600,000 ($790,000) depending on the location and surrounding conditions to install just one Eole Water turbine.”
All for 62 liters per hour or ~1,000 liters per day. A comparison can be made with the traditional windmill pump with greater capacity and less cost. For example,
http://aermotorwindmill.com/
Anthony> many people don’t want to participate any more
What do you mean, “any more”? You never have; and I doubt any of the folks here have. You’d rather sit on the sidelines carping, and inventing excuses for not making things better.
> due to the bullying that you and a few others display there on the climate issue.
Excuses, excuses.
> The fact is that with many (but not all) climate articles, there aren’t stable references from one day to the next because there is so much tinkering going on.
You’re making that up. Care to prove me wrong? Then find some examples. vague generalities don’t cut it.
REPLY: I’ve never contributed? Really, you should learn to research before making such challenges. I submitted the original page on the Climate Reference Network to Wikipedia in April 2008 after my invited visit to NCDC. I actually did it from my hotel room in Asheville because no page existed on it and I thought there should be one after meeting with NCDC staff (who I was impressed with BTW for that project division). So I took the description from NCDC and posted it along with the appropriate title and cites. It was then promptly deleted by one of the pseudonym named climate bullies you cavort with. My crime was using my own name….because well, we just can’t have that awful Watts person submitting to Wikipedia. Only the anointed get to touch the holy Wiki climate reference book it seems, mere unclean mortals like myself get their contributions deleted wholesale. So I don’t bother anymore. I know others that have been turned off by the bullying as well.
Ah, the famous WMC signature line “You’re making that up.”, now used on almost any blog entry where you are challenged. Just look at any talk page and note the change history for articles on climate for Wikipedia and it is easy to see how much change goes on from day to day. There’s a lot of tinkering. Though from your world view it seems you don’t believe so. A few examples of what the climate bullies of Wikipedia have had happen to them:
Another prominent Wikipedia editor has been climate topic banned – Kim Dabelstein
William Connolley, now “climate topic banned” at Wikipedia
Wikipedia climate revisionism by William Connolley continues
More on Wikipedia and Connolley – he’s been canned as a Wiki administrator
And of course there’s this one which laid it all bare:
Wikibullies at work. The National Post exposes broad trust issues over Wikipedia climate information
Of course since you’ve never taken any responsibility for your behavior, I doubt you’ll do so now. You’ll just act like Mike Mann does and say its everyone else’s problem but yours.
Look, we don’t like each other, and I doubt we ever will. You think I’m stupid (along with everyone else here) and have said so publicly, I think you are a condescending bully. By that premise, why would we bother to even try anymore at Wikipedia (to make it better – your words) when you claim we are too stupid to contribute anything? So let’s make it simple, let’s not waste each other’s time here anymore. You have Stoat, I have WUWT. Your comments really aren’t welcome here because you’ve been so disruptive that the threads become mostly about you, rather than the topic. So, I suggest you stick to Stoat, because you aren’t winning any converts here with your style. – Anthony