Grass and other vegetation cools itself and with that the surrounding air by evapotranspiration, solar panels do not. Parking lots are warmer than meadows, buil

Grass and other vegetation cools itself and with that the surrounding air by evapotranspiration, solar panels do not. Parking lots are warmer than meadows, built-up areas warmer than forested areas. If you're inclined to experimenting and you happen to have (access to) a multimeter with a temperature probe you can test this for yourself. On a sunny day find a spot where you have bare dry dark soil close to vegetation-covered soil. Put the temperature probe (generally a thermocouple) on a stand ca. 2 cm over the bare soil and leave it there for a minute, then read the temperature. Do the same on the vegetation-covered soil and again read the temperature. You'll quickly find that the temperature over the vegetation-less area easily rises to 90°C while that over the vegetation-covered area does not tend to climb much over 40°C. Now add some convection - wind or natural convection - to move that hot air from that soil or from under those panels to a neighbouring area and you'll find that is does have a significant impact.