NASA Finds Vegetation Essential for Limiting City Warming Effects [View all]

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https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/vegetation-essential-for-limiting-city-warming-effects

[font face=Serif]Aug. 25, 2015

[font size=5]NASA Finds Vegetation Essential for Limiting City Warming Effects[/font]


The temperature difference between urban areas and surrounding vegetated land due to the presence of impervious surfaces across the continental United States.
Credits: NASA's Earth Observatory

[font size=3]Cities are well known hot spots – literally. The urban heat island effect has long been observed to raise the temperature of big cities by 1 to 3°C (1.8 to 5.4°F), a rise that is due to the presence of asphalt, concrete, buildings, and other so-called impervious surfaces disrupting the natural cooling effect provided by vegetation. According to a new NASA study that makes the first assessment of urbanization impacts for the entire continental United States, the presence of vegetation is an essential factor in limiting urban heating.

Impervious surfaces' biggest effect is causing a difference in surface temperature between an urban area and surrounding vegetation. The researchers, who used multiple satellites' observations of urban areas and their surroundings combined into a model, found that averaged over the continental United States, areas covered in part by impervious surfaces, be they downtowns, suburbs, or interstate roads, had a summer temperature 1.9°C higher than surrounding rural areas. In winter, the temperature difference was 1.5 °C higher in urban areas.

"This has nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions. It's in addition to the greenhouse gas effect. This is the land use component only," said Lahouari Bounoua, research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study.

The study, published this month in Environmental Research Letters, also quantifies how plants within existing urban areas, along roads, in parks and in wooded neighborhoods, for example, regulate the urban heat effect.

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