Cooling Down Earth’s Cities

With recent record-breaking summer heat waves, spiking urban temperatures have become a major concern for cities tackling climate change. Densely populated areas are warming far faster than their rural and suburban surroundings, creating dangerous “urban heat islands” that threaten public health, increase energy consumption, and disproportionately impact city dwellers with lower incomes.

Meanwhile, designing buildings to protect occupants from climate extremes—while managing energy demand—has become increasingly complex, and especially challenging in the developing world.

“Closing the skills and capacity gap in those markets is one of the most important levers the sector has,” Hanane Hafraoui, GlobalABC lead program manager at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), told The Earth & I.

Climate adaptation now goes further than just planting more trees. Professor Mat Santamouris has spent more than four decades developing a powerful combination of climate-smart solutions. These are aimed at designing cities and buildings to stay cool naturally, entice investors, and consider the well-being of citizens from lower-income brackets.

 Read More: https://www.theearthandi.org/post/cooling-down-earth-s-cities