Effects of Topography on Assessing Wind Farm Impacts Using MODIS Data

Abstract

Abstract This paper uses the empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis to decompose satellite-derived nighttime land surface temperature (LST) for the period of 2003–11 into spatial patterns of different scales and thus to identify whether (i) there is a pattern of LST change associated with the development of wind farms and (ii) the warming effect over wind farms reported previously is an artifact of varied surface topography. Spatial pattern and time series analysis methods are also used to supplement and compare with the EOF results. Two equal-sized regions with similar topography in west-central Texas are chosen to represent the wind farm region (WFR) and nonwind farm region (NWFR), respectively. Results indicate that the nighttime warming effect seen in the first mode (EOF1) in WFR very likely represents the wind farm impacts due to its spatial coupling with the wind turbines, which are generally built on topographic high ground. The time series associated with the EOF1 mode in WFR also shows a persistent upward trend over wind farms from 2003 to 2011, corresponding to the increase of operating wind turbines with time. Also, the wind farm pixels show a warming effect that differs statistically significantly from their upwind high-elevation pixels and their downwind nonwind farm pixels at similar elevations, and this warming effect decreases with elevation. In contrast, NWFR shows a decrease in LST with increasing surface elevation and no warming effects over high-elevation ridges, indicating that the presence of wind farms in WFR has changed the LST–elevation relationship shown in NWFR. The elevation impacts on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LST, if any, are much smaller and statistically insignificant than the strong and persistent signal of wind farm impacts. These results provide further observational evidence of the warming effect of wind farms reported previously.