The impacts of large-scale solar farms on climate and terrestrial ecosystem

Renewable energy, such as the solar energy, needs to be promoted around the world to substitute for the fossil fuels that currently still dominate worldwide energy consumption.

Ideally, implementations of the large-scale solar photovoltaic panels can utilize substantial solar power which is the most abundant renewable energy source.

However, due to the radiative forcing and associated with complex atmosphere-land(vegetation) feedbacks and ocean-atmosphere feedbacks, the profound impacts on climate and terrestrial ecosystem induced by these solar farms are poorly understood.

Here I propose a 4-year project to meet these challenges by employing a state-of-art Earth System model (ESM, coupled ocean-atmosphere-terrestrial ecosystem) and analyzing the first series of solar farm ESM simulations in the world.

This project will break new ground by focusing on the quantification of massive reorganizations in the coupled ocean-atmosphere-terrestrial ecosystem to the large-scale solar farms.

These results will greatly advance our understanding of the mechanisms for the interaction processes in the Earth system regarding similar land-cover land-use changes.

They also help to find potential suitable locations for large-scale solar farm installment that optimize the energy production while minimizing harmful climate, ecological consequences.

All these are ultimately essential to meet the IPCC 1.5 ̊C mitigation target in the context of sustainable development.