Pricing the urban cooling benefits of solar panel deployment in Sydney, Australia

Ma, S.; Goldstein, Michael A.; Pitman, Andrew J.; Haghdadi, Navid; MacGill, Iain

doi:10.1038/srep43938

Cited by 27 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 35 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…One heat mitigation strategy is to use high-albedo roofs and paved roads and/or rooftop high-performance solar cells to alleviate surface heating during the daytime (e.g. (Seneviratne et al 2018)), which requires cautious implementation for the desired outcomes (Kapsalis et al 2014, Ma et al 2017. Another effective heat abatement strategy is the use of nature-based solutions (Frantzeskaki et al 2019), such as restoration of city parks, tree lined streets, gardens, and green facades, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Greenspace, bluespace, and their interactive influence on urban thermal environments

2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Urban land use land cover (LULC) change raises ambient temperature and modifies atmospheric moisture, which increases heat-related health risks in cities. Greenspace and bluespace commonly coexist in urban landscapes and are nature-based heat mitigation strategies. Yet, their interactive effects on urban thermal environments are rarely assessed and it remains unclear how extreme heat events (EHEs) affect their ability to regulate human thermal comfort. Using multi-year observations from a dense urban observational network in Madison, WI, we found that green and blue spaces jointly modify the intraurban spatiotemporal variability of temperature and humidity, and the resultant effects on thermal comfort show diurnal and seasonal asymmetry. Greenspace is more effective at cooling throughout the year, particularly at night. Accelerated cooling efficiency is found in areas with dominant greenspace coverage and little co-influence from bluespace. The thermal comfort benefit due to greenspaces can be offset by bluespaces because of intensified nighttime warming and humidifying effects during the warm months, although a weak daytime cooling of bluespace is observed. EHEs enhance bluespace cooling, but the overall joint thermal regulation remains the same due to the enhanced moisture effect. Our findings suggest that diverse outcomes of green and blue spaces cross multiple temporal scales should be holistically assessed in urban planning. The analysis framework based on generalized additive models is robust and transferable to other cities and applications to disentangle the nonlinear co-influences of different drivers of urban environmental phenomena.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Greenspace, bluespace, and their interactive influence on urban thermal environments

2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A number of mitigation strategies have been proposed to reduce the UHI effect by modifying the land surface, such as the use of green and cool roofs/walls (Imran et al., 2018; D. Li et al., 2014; Ma et al., 2018; Sharma et al., 2016; Sun et al., 2016; Yang et al., 2016a; Zhang et al., 2017), deploying rooftop solar photovoltaic panels (Ma et al., 2017; Salamanca et al., 2016), and increasing urban vegetation fractions (Jacobs et al., 2018; X. X. Li & Norford, 2016). Green roofs and walls reduce air temperature by increasing evapotranspiration and decreasing sensible heat exchange while cooling buildings by increasing the reflection of short‐wave solar radiation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of mitigation strategies have been proposed to reduce the UHI effect by modifying the land surface, such as the use of green and cool roofs/walls (Imran et al, 2018;Ma et al, 2018;Sharma et al, 2016;Sun et al, 2016;Yang et al, 2016a;Zhang et al, 2017), deploying rooftop solar photovoltaic panels (Ma et al, 2017;Salamanca et al, 2016), and increasing urban vegetation fractions (Jacobs et al, 2018;X. X. Li & Norford, 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Effectiveness of Urban Hydrological Processes in Mitigating Urban Heat Island and Human Thermal Stress During a Heat Wave Event in Nanjing, China

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Over the past 40 years, the urbanization process has developed rapidly all over the world. This is especially so in China, where the urbanization rate has reached 59.58% in 2018, and more than 831.37 million people live in cities (X. Li et al., 2019). Rapid urbanization has introduced many adverse effects, such as urban heat islands (UHIs; Y. Chen & Zhang, 2018), heavier rainfall (Miao et al., 2011), storm floods (Ntelekos et al., 2010), and air pollution (Baklanov et al., 2016). The UHI effect, in which urban areas are hotter than their rural surroundings, results from absorption and retention of heat by the built environment, less vegetation cover, and abundant anthropogenic heat release in cities (Oke, 1982). The UHI effect has profound impacts on the urban environment, particularly on human thermal comfort and health (Kovats & Hajat, 2008). Heat waves, periods of abnormally hot weather, exacerbate the UHI effect and cause cities to be more vulnerable, resulting in higher heat stress for urban residents (Li & Bou-Zeid, 2013). In the Yangtze River Delta, UHI-enhanced heat waves have shown an increasing trend in recent years (Ao et al., 2019; Tan et al., 2010; Xia et al., 2016). The combination of UHI effects and heat waves is becoming an important issue in this area because of its hot summer season. To predict the effects of heat waves on human health, a heat stress index is often used (Buzan et al., 2015). Heat stress is a complex measure combining temperature, humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation, coupled with individual factors including age, metabolism, physical activity, and health (Willett & Sherwood, 2012). With rapid urbanization and global warming, the overall trend is toward increasing heat stress on humans

show abstract

“…Few studies have used regional climate models (RCMs) to investigate the potential for land-based SRM in reducing warming at the regional scale, however, to the best of our knowledge, these have all focused on the northern hemisphere (e.g., Davin et al, 2014). The few recent studies which have used RCMs to investigate land-based SRM in Australia have focused on urban land-use management (Imran et al, 2019(Imran et al, , 2018Jacobs et al, 2018;Ma et al, 2017), rather than agricultural management.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Could crop albedo modification reduce regional warming over Australia?

Kala¹,

Hirsch²

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Climate observations and projections for Australia show an increase in warm temperature extremes, including the frequency, duration and intensity of heatwaves. Recent global scale studies have suggested that agricultural land-use management options, such as increasing crop albedo, could reducing local warming. Australia has approximately 3,727,210 km2 of cropland agricultural land-use, the majority of which is in southwest Western Australia and southeast Australia. This presents a potential opportunity to reduce regional warming via crop albedo enhancement. We use a regional climate model at 10 km resolution, to show that crop albedo enhancement of up to 0.1 could reduce monthly mean daily maximum temperatures by -1.0&#176;C to -1.2&#176;C, and monthly highest maximum temperatures by up to -1.4&#176;C to -1.6&#176;C during the cropping season. This cooling is approximately 3 times higher over Australia than global climate models predict. We highlight stronger cooling over southwest Western Australia as compared to southeast Australia, the opposite to global model studies which poorly resolve southwestern agricultural regions. The regional cooling was driven by a reduction in surface net shortwave radiation leading to a decrease in both sensible and latent heat flux of up to 50 W m-2 and 20 W m-2 respectively, when albedo is increased by up to 0.1. There were no cloud feedbacks or effects on precipitation. Our results highlight the importance of using regional climate models at a sufficiently high spatial resolution when investigating agricultural land-use management to reduce regional warming.

show abstract

Pricing the urban cooling benefits of solar panel deployment in Sydney, Australia

Cited by 27 publications

References 35 publications

Greenspace, bluespace, and their interactive influence on urban thermal environments

Greenspace, bluespace, and their interactive influence on urban thermal environments

Effectiveness of Urban Hydrological Processes in Mitigating Urban Heat Island and Human Thermal Stress During a Heat Wave Event in Nanjing, China

Could crop albedo modification reduce regional warming over Australia?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About