Nature Communications editors highlight CMI research paper on solar and climate change
Amilcare Porporato, a professor in civil and environmental engineering and the High Meadows Environmental Institute and a member of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI) leadership team, had his paper, “Impacts of solar intermittency on future photovoltaic reliability,” highlighted by editors at Nature Communications as one of a small number of recent studies and articles published in the journal that are particularly interesting or important in the field of Applied Physics and Mathematics. Published in October 2020 with past Princeton postdoc Jun Yin and Annalisa Molini at Khalifa University, the paper found that climate change could make solar-power production in hot, arid areas less reliable in the future as higher surface temperatures lead to more moisture, aerosols and particulates in the atmosphere. Supported by CMI, the study was the first to assess the day-to-day reliability of solar energy under climate change and was featured on the Princeton University homepage.