Turbines warm wind: US study

Wind farms are having an impact on local weather and land surface temperatures, according to a US study.
Researchers from the University of Albany in New York studied land surface temperatures of regions around large wind farms in Texas from 2003 to 2011, and found the turbines can produce a night-time warming trend of up to 0.72 degrees Celsius per decade.
The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, said that the turbines pulled warmer “near surface air” from higher altitudes at night.
“Typically at night there’s a stable atmosphere with a warm layer overlying a cool layer,” said Liming Zhou, lead author of the study
He said, however, that the impact was “small and local” and that the results should not be applied on a global scale.
Dr Zhou said he and his team were now expanding their research into the interaction between wind farms and the “atmosphere boundary layer near the surface.”