by Shauna Theel, via Media Matters
A recent study of satellite data found that nighttime land temperatures in the immediate vicinity of wind turbines in Texas have increased relative to nearby areas without turbines. Conservative media outlets, including Fox Nation, Rush Limbaugh and Jim Hoft, are distorting the research to claim that wind farms “cause global warming” and Fox News’ morning show concluded “wind ain’t working.” But the study’s lead author said via email that this coverage is “misleading.”
The researchers, led by Liming Zhou, said it is “[v]ery likely” that “wind turbines do not create a net warming of the air and instead only re-distribute the air’s heat near the surface, which is fundamentally different from the large-scale warming effect caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.” The turbines pull down warm air, increasing land surface temperatures, which already have “a larger day-night variation” than the surface air temperatures featured in daily weather reports.
The authors further noted that “this analysis is from a short period,” from 2003 to 2011, and is “over a region with rapid growth of wind farms,” west-central Texas, so it is likely that their estimate of a “nighttime warming effect” is higher than “in other locations and over longer periods.”
This piece was originally published at Media Matters for America and was republished with permission.
See also the Washington Post’s “No, wind farms are not causing global warming,” which quotes Stanford’s Mark Jacobson on the subject:
To get a sense for what scientists know about this topic, I called Mark Jacobson, an environmental engineer at Stanford who has done a fair bit of modeling work in this area. The key thing to note is that, for now, humanity doesn’t use anywhere near enough wind power to make a big difference to global wind patterns. Jacobson’s earlier research suggested that there’s somewhere around 72 terawatts of wind power that could feasibly be harnessed worldwide. At the end of 2011, the world’s wind power generation capacity was still just 0.2 terawatts. (Human beings use about 16 terawatts of energy, all told.)
And scientists dispute what would happen if we did start blanketing the globe with wind turbines. One 2004 study led by the University of Calgary’s David Keith found that getting just 2 terawatts of electricity from wind could produce “non-negligible climactic change at continental scales” — including shifts in rainfall patterns. (That much wind power would not, however, change the overall temperature of the planet.) But, says Jacobson, the effects that Keith’s group modeled don’t appear to be distinguishable from random fluctuations in the Earth’s climate. “To me,” says Jacobson, “that’s a meaningless result.”
Jacobson himself is working on a more in-depth effort to model the effects of a very large ramp-up in wind — those results could be published later this year. He says it’s possible that a massive expansion of wind turbines over both land and sea could even cool the planet somewhat, by slowing the rate at which water evaporates from the soil and enters the atmosphere. But his study is still under review.
For any of these effects to be noticeable, however, the wind industry would have to be several orders of magnitude larger than it is now. As far as the present day is concerned, there’s no evidence that wind power is having a major effect on the world’s climate, while there’s plenty of evidence that the greenhouse gases we’re pumping into the air are doing quite a bit to heat the Earth.
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So let me get this straight. Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and Jim Hoft, whoever he is, are pulling down a lot of hot air and distributing it around Texas and elsewhere.
What’s new?
I think “redistribute the air’s heat near the surface” could be misunderstood.
The wind turbines capture some energy from wind, which means that the remaining wind energy that passes beyond the turbines has been somewhat depleted, and smoke tests show that the discharged wind forms eddies.
http://www.arising.com.au/aviation/windturbines/wind-turbine.html
It would be a simpler hypothesis to suggest that because the turbines capture some of the wind energy, the exiting wind does not have as much energy and velocity cool the land surface that is down-wind.
“The turbines pull down warm air…”
I’m not really following this. I thought the wind moves the turbines, not the other way around.
Not only that, temperature usually declines with distance from the ground, following the adiabatic lapse rate, so normally we’d expect cooler air up among the top tips of the turbine blades to be what’s “pulled down” by the swing of the blades.
That is unless there is a temperature inversion which puts a layer of warm air above a layer of cold air. But that’s not always the weather condition.
That is why I look to a much simpler explanation of less surface wind speed, therefore less surface cooling down-wind.
Yeah, well. I am not an expert on this particular topic, but my understanding is that the wind becomes more turbulent as it passes through a wind farm, because a wind turbine rotor creates its own wake effect as it turns. The increased turbulence is what causes increased mixing of warmer air that is slightly higher in the atmosphere with cooler air near the ground. The critical point, though, is that the notion that this is somehow similar to global warming from fossil fuels is junk science. Wind turbines don’t add any heat to the atmosphere and they don’t add any heat-trapping gases to it, either.–Tom Gray, Wind Energy Communications Consultant
Scholars and Rogues has a very good explanation of the air mixing phenomenon.–Tom Gray, Wind Energy Communications Consultant
Thanks for the link. That clears up a good bit about the relationship between the turbines and typical night time air temperature movement.
Misleading information from right wing news outlets and purveyors of BS in the US, well gosh who would have thought…
Any news from individuals or organisations in the US who actually have integrity and report the consensus not the controversy or is that just wishfull thinking?
When I was reading about the article I knew it would be misinterpreted and misrepresented by the less attentive – I was like oh god, here we go, they are not going to be able to handle this.
I don’t think it is a matter of “less attentive” so much as the kind of willful distortion we have seen previously on a wide variety of issues related to global climate change. Most of the outlets that have played up the misleading aspects of this story are the same that have played a role in spreading other disinformation.
I wonder if these findings could be used to our advantage…fruit (especially citrus) growers could benefit from this effect if wind turbines were in their orchards.
(I believe I’ve seen smaller scale versions of this in wine country)
I was wondering about that. If the warming is at night. Also humidity – especially humidity as well, if you hit that right you can decrease pests/fungus – also using the wind mast/foundation as a cistern/huge local sprinkler as well.
It could actually be that there is a optimal farming situation that involves wind.
Douglas,
The wind turbines you’ve seen in wine country are actually there to keep the air moving during potential freezing events — just a bit of extra air movement (which is all these noisy beasts achieve) allows for a couple of degrees of cold below where the grapes plants would otherwise freeze.
They also use smudge pots to obscure the night sky — on clear low humidity nights the heat transfer into space can drop the plants below freezing. You can imagine what the local air is like when they do that.
Strongly feel that wind farms are a poor alternative to having small wind-powered generators designed into every home, school or other building. No losses that way.
Yes Roger, I know they’re used to help prevent freezing. I’m wondering if a full scale wind turbine would produce the same effect (and of course the added benefit of electricity generation).
The study on Global warming by Wind farms is just for past time!
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
Wind Energy Expert
E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com