The researchers, led by Liming Zhou, said it is "[v]ery likely" that "wind turbines do not create a net warming of the air and instead only re-distribute the air’s heat near the surface, which is fundamentally different from the large-scale warming effect caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases." The wind turbines pull down warm air, increasing land surface temperatures, which already have "a larger day-night variation" than the surface air temperatures featured in daily weather reports.
The authors further noted that "this analysis is from a short period," from 2003 to 2011, and is "over a region with rapid growth of wind farms," west-central Texas, so it is likely that their estimate of a "nighttime warming effect" is higher than "in other locations and over longer periods."
By Shauna Theel, http://mediamatters.org/
