Cloud seeding is getting competition as developments around solar parks in the United Arab Emirates are picking up speed. Rainfall could be triggered in the future using dark solar panels. In addition to the United Arab Emirates, the new solution could also be used in Namibia and on the Mexican Baja California peninsula.
Not science fiction: make your own rain
In regions like the United Arab Emirates, water is a valuable commodity. In order to better cover water needs in the future, they now want to rely on solar parks that generate their own weather. The small city-sized parks are designed to generate heat through their dark solar panels, which cause updrafts that can in turn – under the right conditions – lead to downpours. The aim is to better serve water needs in desert regions and produce water for up to ten thousand people. German climate scientist at the University of Hohenheim, Oliver Branch, told the journal Earth System Dynamics that some solar farms have already reached the right size to produce this effect.
Solar farm: impact on climate change
The research area in which Branch works examines how renewable energy can change regional weather patterns and thus have the potential to significantly influence climate change. It is already known from previous research that huge solar farms covering more than 1 million square kilometers in the Sahara desert do work and generate rain and vegetation. There are also disadvantages, because the wind conditions would be changed so that the tropical rains would shift north and harm the Amazon. Now there is agreement: the solar parks should change the weather on a more realistic scale.
10 annual rainfalls could produce water for 30,000 people
Branch and his research colleagues used the weather model from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research and modeled the solar farms as almost black fields that absorb 95% of incoming sunlight. Under certain conditions, so much heat could be absorbed that updrafts emerged and cloud formation was promoted. But this also requires a source of atmospheric moisture, such as moist high-altitude winds. According to the scientists’ model, a 20 square kilometer solar field could generate a rainfall of almost 600,000 cubic meters – that’s equivalent to one centimeter of rain in the Manhattan area. Ten such rains in one year could produce a total of water for more than 30,000 people. There is one problem, however. The simulated solar panels were darker than most panels available on the market.
UAE has committed to testing the use of solar farms
Branch is confident that he will be able to use the project in real life in the future. His research project was financed by the United Arab Emirates. Whether the country will actually use the system in practice remains to be seen. According to the director of the UAE research program, Alya Al Mazrouei, there is a commitment to create strategies for possible implementation. However, there is currently increasing interest in the weather influencing process “cloud seeding”, in which substances are sprayed into clouds to promote precipitation. Branch is nevertheless confident and, in addition to the UAE, also sees areas such as Namibia and the Mexican Baja California peninsula as optimal areas of application for the solar farms.
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