Geotechnologies

Over the past decade, the title of the “largest solar farm in the world” has changed hands frequently. As the global demand for renewable energy surges, countries are racing to expand their solar capacity, pushing the limits of what was once thought possible.In 2014, the Topaz Solar Farm in California held the title with a 550-megawatt (MW) facility. Just a year later, Solar Star, another California-based solar project, surpassed it with a capacity of 579 MW. By 2016, India took the lead with the Kamuthi Solar Power Project in Tamil Nadu, boasting 648 MW of capacity.Then, in February 2017, China claimed the top spot with the Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, a massive solar installation with a staggering 850 MW of capacity.

Morocco gets plenty of sun—about 3,000 hours per year, according to the Solar GCC Alliance. A new solar plant in that desert country is poised to take advantage of the ample Saharan sunlight.

“This dataset provides daily surface meteorological data from 1979 onward, designed for use in agricultural and agroecological studies. Known as AgERA5, it is based on hourly ECMWF ERA5 surface-level data. The acquisition and preprocessing of the original ERA5 data are complex and specialized tasks. By providing the AgERA5 dataset, users can bypass this process and directly access meaningful information for analysis and modeling. The variables provided in this dataset are tailored to meet the input requirements of most agricultural and agroecological models. The data has been aggregated into daily intervals in local time zones and corrected for more accurate topography with a spatial resolution of 0.1°. Corrections were made using grid- and variable-specific regression equations applied to the ERA5 dataset, interpolated to the 0.1° grid. These equations were trained on the high-resolution (HRES) ECMWF operational atmospheric model at a resolution of 0.1°. This adjustment ensures the data aligns with the most accurate topography, land-use patterns, and land-sea delineation of the ECMWF HRES model.”

Geotechnologies: Geotechnologies can be used to map areas of extreme poverty, identify vulnerable populations, and target economic and social development programs.Example: Income distribution maps that help direct resources and policies to the most underserved areas.