Fig. 3: The albedo change of sites covered by PV panels in different land-cover types and countries.
From: Small reduction in land surface albedo due to solar panel expansion worldwide
a–c Boxplots of the background albedo (higher transparency) and the albedo in the site covered by PV panels (lower transparency) for different land-cover types with the paired points connected by gray line. The center line of each box represents the median; box limits represent the upper and lower quartiles; whiskers extend to 1.5 times the interquartile range. The captions show the median values of absolute albedo change (× 10−2). Gr, Cr, Ba, and OS represent sites in grasslands, croplands, barren and open shrublands, respectively. The numbers in parentheses after land-cover types represent the corresponding number of samples. Paired t-test is used to test the significant difference between the PV site’s mean albedo (with 100% coverage of PV facilities) and background albedo (with 0% coverage of PV facilities) (*P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001).
