The impacts of solar photovoltaic farms on land surface temperature in the continental United States
Abstract
Global ever-growing demand for clean energy and the eagerness to reduce carbon emissions contribute to an exponential expansion of utility-scale solar photovoltaic farm (USSPVF). In the United States (U.S.), 1755 large USSPVF (≥ 1MW) have been installed with total capacity of 17.52 GW prior to 2017. However, the environmental impacts (e.g., changing albedo and microclimate) have never been quantified across the nation. Here, we assessed the impacts of 438 selected USSPVFs (12.56GW, 71.7%) larger than 5MW across the continental U.S. by quantifying their induced changes in surface albedo and land surface temperature (LST). To do so, we developed a novel approach to delineate USSPVF, assess the associated surface albedo change, and estimate LST change using Landsat and Sentinel satellites. We found that the estimated LST change induced by USSPVFs installation showed heterogeneous patterns depending on the geographic location, surface albedo change, and previous LCLU types. Specifically, most of the USSPVFs presented a LST reduction pattern (2.9 ± 2.0 ℃ cooling) in the southwestern, however, the opposite change pattern of LST (up to 3.4 ± 1.7 ℃ warming) was found in the eastern U.S.. We also explored the daytime LST difference (△T) trend along the transition from the edge of USSPVF to a series of the surrounding zones with the same dominant LCLU type. It presented that more than two-thirds of the sites (69.4 ± 0.5 %) exhibited significant △T trends (p-value<0.05) in both warm and cold seasons. It indicated that they had heat island or cold island effect on the surrounding environments. The daytime △T trends changed along the transition more sharply in the warm than in the cold seasons. The environmental impacts could be much larger given the projected USSPVFs capacity share growth from ~1.3% in 2016 to 27% in 2050. Our assessments have the potential to support the land-use planning and policies for balancing green energy and potential impacts on ecosystem services.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMGC53I1207W
- Keywords:
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- 0360 Radiation: transmission and scattering;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 1610 Atmosphere;
- GLOBAL CHANGE