If Heatwaves Are The ‘New Normal’, How Can We Cool Our Cities Down?

Sustainability If Heatwaves Are The ‘New Normal’, How Can We Cool Our Cities Down? Jamie Hailstone Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I write about air quality and the environment. New! Follow this author to improve your content experience.

Got it! Aug 1, 2022, 04:33am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The sun sets behind highrise buildings in downtown Los Angeles, California on September 30, 2020. – . .

. [+] A heat advisory is in effect for southern California as temperatures hit triple-digits this week with potential for stress on the power grid causing power outages or rolling blackouts. (Photo by Frederic J.

BROWN / AFP) (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images While this may not come as a surprise to many people, official records now show July was hottest month ever recorded on Earth. The annual average temperature in the United States has already warmed over the past few decades and is projected to rise by 5°F – 8.

7°F by the end of this century. In July, the Biden Administration launched Heat. gov , a new website to provide clear information to understand and reduce the health risks of extreme heat.

Extreme heat has been the greatest weather-related cause of death in the U. S. for the past 30 years — killing over 700 people per year .

In addition, extreme heat mortality disproportionately affects Native American and Black communities. As policymakers grapple with how to deal with this “new normal”, several projects are underway to cool down cities and towns, which are often hotter than rural areas. Some are focusing on nature-based solutions, like living walls and green roofs, but an innovative project is being led by the roofing and waterproofing manufacturer GAF, which is deploying solar reflective road and pavement coatings in a 10-square block area in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Pacoima MORE FOR YOU Is Carbon Capture Another Fossil Fuel Industry Con? Sustainable Fashion Wants Brands To Redefine Business Growth Trouble With Predicting Future Of Transportation Is That Today Gets In The Way The project covers streets, basketball courts, playgrounds and other spaces with the coating, which reflects solar infrared radiation that normally would be absorbed by the asphalt.

Traditional forms of black asphalt absorb and store more heat than natural surfaces. The asphalt then releases heat back into the atmosphere at night. This can help keep temperatures in built-up areas high – which is sometimes known as the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon.

Jeff Terry, vice president of sustainability at GAF and project lead for the GAF Cool Community project, said the solar reflective coating can help reduce surface temperatures, sometimes by between 10 and 12 degrees in the heat of the day, which ultimately helps reduce the ambient temperature around the neighbourhood as well. Terry added they chose the Pacoima block because it has plenty of hard surfaces and regularly records high temperatures all year round. “It’s also a community that has not seen a lot of investment in cooling solutions compared to wealthier communities,” said Terry.

“This is a community where one in five people are living below or on the poverty line, so we also wanted to focus on raising awareness and education in a neighbourhood that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention around the impacts of climate change and urban heat. ” Terry said the installation of all the new surfaces and coatings should be finished by early August and they will spend the next 12 months monitoring air and surface temperatures, along with the heat absorption rate of the new surfaces – often referred to as albedo. Additional phases of the project may also include cool roofing and solar.

As part of this research, GAF has installed two roof-level weather stations in the neighbourhood, which will monitor a wide range of factors, including humidity, wind direction and incoming solar radiation. To monitor street-level heat, a specially adapted golf cart with sensors will travel around the block and satellite technology and drones will also be deployed to test how effective the new surface coatings are. He added the project has worked closely with the community at every stage of the project.

“We set up a whole series of community meetings where we invited residents to come together, and help them understand that we’re not interlopers, we want to become a part of their community with them over the year plus of this project,” said Terry. “We had a whole team who coated the local basketball court and created a really cool LA Dodger blue court, because that’s what the community wanted to do. “When it was finished, we held a community celebration and there was one little guy just running around barefoot on the basketball court, right about noon.

There was no way he could have done that before. His feet would have burned off,” he added. “Our hope is beyond really helping this one community is that this helps build a model that will help urban planners.

This could give them an example of what works and show them why we need to invest in addressing urban heating. ” Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn . Check out some of my other work here .

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