Wind power is on track to supply almost a fifth of the world’s demand for electricity by 2050, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. While wind turbines are generally thought of as a sustainable alternative to traditional energy sources, relatively little is known about the impact they have on their immediate surroundings. A collaborative research team based in Beijing, China, is working to better understand the effect wind farms have locally and globally by examining the performance of predictive models currently being used to forecast their effect. Their analysis is published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.