
Urban Climates - raattgift
http://thebritishgeographer.weebly.com/urban-climates.html
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samcheng
Does anyone know how much the automobile directly and indirectly contributes
to the heat island effect?

Not only do you have thousands of vehicles burning thousands of gallons of
petroleum, you also have low-albedo asphalt parking lots everywhere.

Do car-friendly cities have a bigger heat-island effect than transit-friendly
cities?

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stdbrouw
Did you at least attempt to read the article? It's in the first paragraph.

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samcheng
The article mentions that the energy input from combustion is significantly
higher than that from insolation in Manhattan in January, but also that the
primary driver of the heat island effect is from building materials.

Obviously asphalt roads and (especially) parking lots are an indirect
contributor to low-albedo and low-permeability landscape.

Taken together, how much of the heat island effect is due to the automobile?
Would a pedestrian + transit city, with aggressive tree canopy, still be a
heat island?

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neves
What would be an effective way to reduce cities heat? Just plant more trees?
Special roof top materials?

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twobyfour
Even repainting roofs from black to white can make a major difference for
minimal cost.

Planting trees is great in many ways (quality of life and air quality in
addition to heat mitigation) but is pricier. It can also take several years to
"bear fruit" (even for non fruit-bearing trees ;-) because generally you plant
saplings, which can take decades to grow to a size where they provide
significant shade. NYC hust completed an initiative to plant a million new
trees, and it's barely made a dent in the amount of treeless sidewalks, let
alone unshaded space in the city.

It would have been nice if the article had made more concrete recommendations,
tho, I agree.

