AMOC hair storm31 May 2026 22:59
The biggest threat to solar
The more a hailstone weighs, the faster it falls through the air - meaning it hits infrastructure with much more power.
Andreas Prein, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich, says that small hail can wreak havoc on crops, but when stones get to around five centimetres in size, they risk "major damage" to vehicles, roofs, solar panels and other infrastructure.
Solar farms are often required to prove that their panels can be positioned at a 70-degree angle to protect against hail from cracking their protective glass, which is costly to repair. But upgrading Europe's booming solar industry with remote-tilting capabilities is a "significant challenge", says Chaucer.
One hole on a roof from a single hailstone can be patched, but many large stones hitting that roof usually mean an expensive roof replacement, Allen explains.
What happens is there’s more water vapour in a warmer atmosphere and “that increases the available energy to the atmosphere and so we tend to end up with stronger updrafts,” Allen says. “And that leads to more thunderstorms with updrafts capable of producing hail.”...
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