Beyond a certain size, solar farms become large enough to affect the weather around them and ultimately the climate as a whole. In our new research we have looked at the effect such climate-altering solar farms might have on solar power production elsewhere in the world. We know that solar power is affected by weather conditions and output varies through the days and seasons. This would in turn affect patterns of cloud cover and how much solar energy could be generated around the world. If huge solar farms were installed in other drylands:Changes in solar potential annually (top panels), in december-january-february (middle panel), and june-july-august (bottom panel) in four scenarios where huge solar farms were constructed.
