Researchers used a June 2008 heat wave in Baltimore as a case study. They compared temperatures downtown to those near the Baltimore/Washington International Airport—a residential, half-forested area. Using modeling software, they found that temperatures downtown weren't simply a sum of the urban heat island and the heat wave—they were three and a half degrees hotter than that. The results appear in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. [Dan Li and Elie Bou-Zeid, Synergistic Interactions between Urban Heat Islands and Heat Waves: the Impact in Cities is Larger than the Sum of its Parts]
Urban areas are carpeted in asphalt and concrete, which don't hold water like soil and vegetation do. So while the countryside sweats during a heat wave, cooling itself through evaporation, the city just bakes. But researchers say there's a simple solution to beat the heat: install green roofs, and plant some trees. Which would help the concrete jungle live up to the second half of its name.
—Christopher Intagliata
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast]
