Urban Heat Islands Recent world climate News
During the day, asphalt, concrete, bricks, blacktop, parking lots, and buildings absorb and store heat, then reflect it back out. With plenty of pavement and a dense concentration of buildings, it’s no surprise that cities experience higher temperatures than their rural equivalents.
However, in many circumstances, the difference isn’t just a few degrees. According to the National Integrated Heat Health Information System, neighborhoods in highly developed cities can have temperatures 15 to 20 degrees higher in the mid-afternoon than outlying locations with more vegetation and less urbanization.
On July 14, 2021, Climate Central published a paper explaining how the organization’s scientists and researchers developed an index to assess the intensity of urban heat islands and then applied it to 159 cities around the country. New Orleans, Newark, New York City, Houston, and San Francisco ranked first through fifth in terms of the most intense urban heat islands, with typical temperatures ranging from 7 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit higher.
Large cities such as Chicago, Illinois (7 degrees), Charlotte, North Carolina (7 degrees), Portland, Oregon (6 degrees), and Richmond, Virginia (6 degrees) were also included in the study (6 degrees).
According to the study, cities in the Midwest and Northeast had more compact, historically built-out environments with higher structures, which intensified their urban heat island footprints. Cities with a significant percentage of impermeable surfaces in their geography, such as Houston and Fresno, California, scored better.
“Perhaps surprisingly,” the research stated, “several cities in the severely hot Southwest scored lower on the index.” “Their low ratings are mostly due to the fact that the temperatures in their immediate surroundings are similar to those in cities.”
It went on to say that just because the cities have lower scores doesn’t mean they aren’t experiencing heat waves. Rather, it stresses how the city’s surrounding environment, which is made up of desert or rock, is naturally hotter due to a lower albedo.
Urban heat islands impact our health?
Extreme urban heat is a public health concern because it exacerbates air pollution and creates hazardous conditions for those who work outside or dwell in buildings without air conditioning. With over 85 percent of the population of the United States living in cities, it’s safe to conclude that this will not only affect the vast majority of Americans, but has already done so.
Past discriminatory housing practices, such as redlining (a now-illegal practice in which mortgage lenders denied loans or insurance providers restricted services to certain areas of a community), as well as other socio-economic factors, have resulted in communities of color often ending up in areas with fewer trees and parks, according to studies.
As a result, entire areas have experienced higher levels of urban heat than other neighborhoods within the same city, exposing the latter groups disproportionately to urban heat.
The urban heat island effect has been blamed in the past for contributing to the severity of heat waves by preventing cities from cooling down at night. While the actual death counts in black and white areas in Chicago during the 1995 heat wave were nearly comparable, the mortality rate for black communities in the city was around 1.5 times greater than their white counterparts. Chicago was ranked among the top ten cities with high intensity scores in the survey.
According to the National Institute of Health, places with rising temperatures are at an increased risk of respiratory infections, heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and heat-related death, even when there are no heat waves.
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