Wind and solar farm could turn the Sahara green

A massive wind and solar installation in the Sahara Desert would increase precipitation and vegetation in the world’s largest hot desert. The study, published in the journal Science, is among the first to model the climate effects of wind and solar installations while taking into account how vegetation responds to changes in heat and precipitation.

“Previous modeling studies have shown that large-scale wind and solar farms can produce significant climate change at continental scales,” said Yan Li, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois in the US. “But the lack of vegetation feedbacks could make the modelled climate impacts very different from their actual behaviour.” “We chose it [Sahara] because it is the largest desert in the world; it is sparsely inhabited; it is highly sensitive to land changes; and it is in Africa and close to Europe and the Middle East, all of which have large and growing energy demands,” he said.