Hurricanes and offshore wind power: if positioned at sea, wind farms would be able to reduce the strength of hurricanes
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himHurricanes ed offshore wind energy: if positioned at sea, wind farms would be able to reduce the strength of hurricanes.
Thus, if on the one hand wind energy is essential in the fight against climate change, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, on the other hand it would impose itself in combating extreme weather phenomena that can increasingly be exasperated by global warming.
This is demonstrated by a study by the universities of Stanford and Delaware, published in Nature, according to which “The army” of offshore turbines can reduce wind speeds, the height of the waves and therefore the floods.
He prof. Mark Z. Jacobson showed with the computer simulations that offshore wind farms with thousands of turbines would reduce the power of three hurricanes, greatly reducing the winds that accompany storms.
To achieve this, Jacobson developed a complex computer model to study air pollution along with energy, climate and weather and, during the study conducted with Cristina Archer and Willett Kempton of the University of Delaware, simulated three hurricanes: Sandy e Isaac, which hit New York and New Orleans in 2012, and Katrina, which hit New Orleans in 2005.
He thus demonstrated that if a hurricane were to encounter a vast expanse of offshore wind turbines, the blades would be able to slow winds up to 92 mph (about 148 km / h) and decrease the strength of the hurricane by 79%.
In Katrina's case, Jacobson's model revealed that a park consisting of 78 thousand wind turbines off the coast of New Orleans would have weakened the hurricane before it landed. For Hurricane Sandy, the model predicts a reduction in wind speed from 35 to 39 meters per second and a 34% reduction in the storm.
Would the solution to reduce the damage of a hurricane then lie in offshore wind? Not bad, if we overcome many of the political resistances present in the States and also if we consider that wind turbines, by generating electricity, reduce atmospheric pollution and global warming.
Germana Carillo
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