Expert Prof. Gerd Ganteför Calls For More Studies On The Regional Climate Impact By Wind Turbines

Countless wind turbines…Northern Germany drought may in part be caused by efforts to prevent drought (climate change)!

More wind parks means less wind, which means less precipitation, which in turn means more drought and warmer temperatures. 

Image: P. Gosselin

German online Reichschuster.de here reports on Gerd Ganteför, a German professor of experimental physics who taught at the University of Konstanz and Johns Hopkins University Baltimore (USA), among others. He has authored some 150 technical articles on renewable energies or climate change.

Ganteför has been an outspoken expert critic of Germany’s energy policy and the alarmist aspects of climate science.

Recently the renowned expert once again asked uncomfortable questions about possible connections between wind parks and their impact on regional climate. The answers Ganteför gave to the German daily “Nordkurier” have raised some eyebrows.

In summary, the physicist warns: “We don’t currently know what all can happen if we continue to put up countless wind turbines.”

The interview was prompted by a 2012 NASA study that suggested large wind farms in particular lead to an increase in the ambient temperature and are thus partly responsible for the warming of the climate.

Though Ganteför, has some doubts about this phenomenon, he nevertheless believes the “connection between wind turbines and global warming is possible – albeit for a reason not examined in the study,” reports Reichschuster.de  “The authors were able to show that wind turbines swirl the cool layers of air that are directly above the ground and the somewhat warmer layers above them, and that this leads to an increase in temperature near the ground.”

Proven in other scientific publications 

Ganteför, however, focusses on another aspect: evaporation, which has been proven in other publications.

The mechanism goes as follows: “Large wind turbines logically slow down the wind by sapping the energy out of it. Less wind means less evaporation and thus less precipitation. And if it gets drier, it could just happen that it gets warmer.”

A study of this kind by Deutsche Windguard was reported on by reitschuster.de in July 2022.

Overdoing wind energy

Moist air from the North Atlantic plays a major role on Europe’s climate, and eventually makes its way over the sea to Germany. But that air gets slowed down by the relatively large wind farms in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, says Ganteför. The possible consequence: “If you overdo it with too many wind turbines”, the region “will become drier” and “this possible scenario needs to be meticulously played out and studied by climatologists.”

“We don’t know at the moment what all can happen if we continue to put up countless wind turbines,” warns Ganteför.

New studies warn

Germany has so far installed over 30,000 wind turbines, which is about 1 every 11 sq. km. Plans are calling for doubling or even tripling the current wind power capacity. But this may be detrimental as new studies show that wind farms are altering local climates, and thus may be having an effect on global climate and contributing to regional droughts. We reported on this here earlier this month.

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