In the past few years, the United States has been hit by several high-intensity, high-destructive hurricanes. Cristina Archer of the University of Delawares recently published a paper and found that An unexpected benefit of large offshore wind farms: they reduce the precipitation caused by these devastating storms. Archer said that although previous research has shown that the hypothetical offshore wind farms can use the kinetic energy of hurricanes to reduce the effects of wind and storm surges, this research shows that offshore wind farms can also affect precipitation. This paper shows that precipitation in the onshore area downstream of the wind farm is significantly reduced, while precipitation in the offshore area upstream or within the wind farm itself will increase.
Cristina Archer (Cristina Archer), professor at the UDs School of Earth, deputy director of the Center for Marine Environment and Wind Power Carbon-Free Power Integration (CCPI), worked with two former PhDs from the University of Delaware, Yang Pan and Chi Yan The research was recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
The researchers used Hurricane Harvey as an example, because it may have brought the worst rains in American history to the Texas coast and caused unprecedented flooding.
Hurricane Harvey taken from the International Space Station (picture from the Internet)
Unlike Hurricane Katrina and Sandy (storm storm is one of the biggest problems), Hurricane Harvey caused a lot of rain to Houston, which caused Houston to be flooded.
Archer explained that wind farms can help mitigate precipitation by affecting two factors that contribute to precipitation: wind convergence and divergence.
When a strong hurricane hits a wind turbine, the wind will slow down. This effect is called "convergence" and will increase precipitation.
Think about this scenario. When a car drove on the highway, everyone drove quickly, then suddenly there was an accident and everyone had to slow down. In this case you will get a collection area for cars, because everyone is slowing down. Archer said: "This is the meeting point upstream of offshore wind farms."
This leads to an increase in precipitation, because when the wind converges to a certain point on the surface, they have nowhere to go except for the rise, and the vertical movement brings more moisture to the atmosphere.
Hurricane Harvey caused an unprecedented flood (picture from the network)
Archer once again used the "accident on the highway" as a metaphor. He said that this difference is similar to what happened when the car finally passed the accident: everyone started to accelerate.
Divergence is the opposite effect. It causes downward movement and attracts air down, which is dry and suppresses precipitation. I was thinking, would this happen if there is an offshore wind farm? Archer said.
By establishing model domains covering the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, and performing numerical simulations, Archer found that regional convergence will occur before the storm strikes the hypothetical wind farm, and it will squeeze out precipitation before approaching the coast. If the wind farm is crossed, divergence will occur, further suppressing precipitation.
When the storm reached the land, it was already squeezed out a lot of water. Archer said: "The Harvey simulation reduced the precipitation by 30%. This means that if you install a series of offshore turbines in a hurricane area, you may see a decrease in precipitation inland.
This study used some hypothetical turbines, ranging from 0 to 74,619. Archer emphasized that this number is unlikely to be achieved in the near future. The United States currently has only 5 turbines for offshore wind farms, but in Europe, the industry is more developed, and some offshore wind farms have more than 100 turbines. Archer said that this is a normal number for an offshore wind power project.
Nevertheless, this study shows that offshore wind farms can not only provide clean energy, but also reduce the impact of hurricanes, which is beneficial to some coastal cities. Archer said she hopes the number of wind farms will increase in the future.
"The more wind farms, the greater the impact on the hurricane," Archer said. When the hurricane actually landed, these turbine arrays had been working for several days, continuing to extract energy and moisture from the storm. Therefore, the storm will weaken.
(Original source: Renewable Energy Magazine China New Energy Network Comprehensive)
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