CITIES: HEAT – Above

Posted on July 27, 2023 by Building The World

**The sun is baking Earth, especially cities.** Image: “Sun spots on surface of sun” by telescope photographer David Dayag. Creative Commons 4.0. Included with appreciation.

HEAT – So far, July 2023 has been the hottest on Earth in history. Sadly, that breaks the record just set in June 2023. The heat has set new records equally in Canada, United States, Mexico, Europe, Asia, and eastern Australia. If 2022 is any indication, the heat will be deadly: 11,000 people died from heat that year – every week. It was not just heat stroke; high temperatures and humidity are dangerous for people coping with heart and pulmonary conditions. The heat is coming both from the sun and from the very ground on which we stand. In this post, we’ll explore heat coming from above, as it affects cities.

**Urban heat island**. Image drawn from data of U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2008, and refined by graphic artist The New Phobia. Image is based on public information and therefore in the public domain, creative commons. Included with appreciation,

Cities are especially prone to heat retention. A study based on satellite land surface temperatures from 2002-2021 revealed cities are 29% hotter than rural locations. In the United States, over 100 million people are presently under a “heat dome.”

**How does a “heat dome” form?** It’s a phenomenon we may see more often, as the climate warms. Image: “Heat Dome during Heat Wave” from U.S. National Weather Service, 2011. Public Domain. Included with appreciation.

Southern Europe is suffering, and heat is now reaching central states like Germany and Poland. The metal of the Eiffel Tower expands in temperatures over 40C, growing as much as 6 inches (0.152 meter). Paris, France reached 109F (42.7C) this summer, affecting the Tower, as well as those sweltering beneath in the nearby cafes.

**The Eiffel Tower’s iron expands in high heat, causing the iconic structure to grow taller**. “Tour Eiffel” by photographer Nitot, 2005. Included with appreciation.

Asia is also affected. In April 2023, a heat wave began in Asia that caused 179 deaths and 460 hospitalizations in India. Schools were closed in Odisha; blackouts in power stations affected Lucknow. Singapore had the warmest month of May on record in 2023. China recorded a temperature of 125 degrees Fahrenheit (52.2C) recently.

“Heat Wave Sign” from Guangdong, China. Image: People’s Republic of China, 2005. Image is public domain in China and included with appreciation.

Cities are not only the hottest places on the planet, they are becoming the future. By 2050, 68% of the world’s population will live in cities. In 1960, there were only two mega-cities (with populations over 10 million: New York and Tokyo. In 1990, there were ten; in 2014, 28. By 2040, there will be 40 cities with over 10 million people. In our era of global warming, heat is and will continue to be an urban problem. Where can solutions be found?

**Phoenix, Arizona, USA has experienced temperatures at or above 110F (43.3C) during the entire month of July 2023.** Image: “Phoenix, Arizona skyline, facing west, 2004” by photographer Bravo1. Dedicated to the public domain by the photographer. Included with appreciation.

SOLUTIONS – Immediate

Create a Heat Risk Map for your city – Durban, South Africa; New York, USA; and Toronto, Canada have already posted heat vulnerable areas online, using Landsat data.

Install sensors to measure surface temperature and humidity – Madrid, Spain has launched a sensor network system.

Develop a Heat Action Plan for your city, working with local communities and councils. Ahmedabad, India saved over 1,000 lives since the city launched its Heat Action Plan in 2013, the first South Asian city to do so. A new version is updated yearly.

Open Cooling Centers and a finder map via an app: Washington DC, USA,; Paris, France; Athens, Greece, and Rotterdam, Netherlands have created apps that indicate the closest cooling center.

**Athens, Greece, has opened cooling centers. In July 2023, wildfires caused evacuations on the Greek island of Rhodes in heat reaching 113F/45C.** Image: “Athens at Sunset” by photographer Panos Zoulakis, 2019. Creative Commons 4.0. Included with appreciation.

SOLUTIONS – Longer Term

Plant trees, bushes, heat-absorbing vegetation to relieve urban heat.

Encourage green roofs and green walls in which a layer of vegetation grows upon a building’s surface to absorb sun and heat.

Upgrade building codes to specify cooling materials for construction, especially roofs.

Paint roofs with white paint, including one developed by Professor Xiulin Ruan and team from Purdue University that reflects sun and heat away from buildings, reducing heat by 98%.

Repave city streets and sidewalks – these surfaces cover 40% of a city’s land. Innovations in pavements include higher permeability to cool surfaces by evaporation.

Support research and development for new kinds of fans and air-conditioning. As the world warms, demand for air-conditioning will increase, especially in dense cities.

**Thermal map of Atlanta**, Georgia, USA based on NASA satellite data, May 11-12, 2009. Blue=cooler; red=warm; white=hot. Public Domain. Included with appreciation.

Summary: we are only now beginning to experience the heat of global warming. Large cities will become dangerous due to urban density, construction, and paved surfaces. But cities are also most able to respond quickly and to test innovations. What are conditions in your area? What are your ideas for responding to urban heat?

Brooke, K . Lusk. “Mega-Cities from 1960 to 2020 – growth and predictions.” Pages 110-120, Five Foundations for Building a Better World, 2018.

C40. “How to Adapt your City to Extreme Heat.” https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/How-to-adapt-your-city-to-extreme-heat?language=en_US

Cappucci, Matthew, with contributions by Jason Samenow, “Coast-to-coast heat home sends temperatures soaring, threatens all-time records.” 13 July 2023. The Washington Post.

Gallego, Mayor Kate. “Phoenix mayor on how the city is coping with heat above 110 degrees every day of July.” 25 July 2023. All Things Considered. National Public Radio interview with Juana Summers. AUDIO: https://www.npr.org/2023/07/25/1190062458/phoenix-mayor-on-how-the-city-is-coping-with-heat-above-110-degrees-every-day-of

Li, Xiangyu, et al., “Full Daytime Sub-ambient Radiative Cooling in Commercial-like Paints with High Figure of Merit.” 21 October 2020. Cell Reports Physical Science, Volume 1, Issue 10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.2020.100221

Liu, Zihan, et al., “Surface warming in global cities is substantially more rapid than in rural background areas.” 29 September 2022, Communications Earth & Environment 3, 219 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00539-x

Madrid, Spain. “Sistema de Vigilancia de la Calidad del Aire del Ayuntamiento de Madrid.” https://www.mambiente.madrid.es

Purdue University. “The whitest paint is here – and it’s the coolest. Literally.” 15 April 2021. Purdue University News. https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2021/Q2/the-whitest-paint-is-here-and-its-the-coolest-literally.html

Sherriff, Lucy, “The simple ways cities can adapt to heatwaves: Satellite images reveal how green spaces, white roads, and water features are helping keep cities cool during deadly heatwaves.” 6 July 2023. BBC Future Planet. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230706-the-simple-ways-cities-can-adapt-to-heatwaves

Great appreciation to Rachael M. Rusting for sharing research.

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G. Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 U

Building the Vegetable Kingdom

Posted on October 20, 2018October 20, 2018 by Building The World

“Carrots of many colors” Image: USDA, Agricultural Research Service, IDK11611-1. Wikimedia commons.

Building a better world – with carrots. That crunchy veggie could be used to strengthen concrete, improving construction techniques, and the environment. Blending carrots into building products makes those materials as much as 80% stronger, according to Mohamed Saafi, Professor and Chair in Structural Integrity and Materials at Lancaster University. Not only stronger, carrot-fortified concrete also develops fewer cracks – the carrots seem to act like superglue – so less cement is required, resulting in a lower carbon output. Could it make a difference in our world? Yes. Cement is the source of 7% of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Roman Bridge at Cangas. Image: wikimedia commons.

Ancient Rome built superior roads and bridges by using materials strengthened by a mix-in of volcanic ash. The Great Wall of China was initially built by compacting reeds and mud, a combination that proved stronger and easily scalable, since the materials were available onsite, important when building a 13,000 mile wall. Bridges on the Grand Canal are another example. Mix-ins have long strengthened building materials.

Meanwhile, the next time you munch on a carrot, consider what Christian Kemp-Griffin, CEO of CelluComp, explained: “Those fibers have strength characteristics in them. It’s the building blocks of the strength of a vegetable.” Because carrots contain so much water, only a very small amount of cellulose of a carrot will alter the property of cement, because water changes as cement hardens. Kemp-Griffin continued: “It’s not the physical fiber that’s causing the strength. It’s the way it holds water. There’s a chemical reaction happening between the fibers and the cement.”

“The Iconic Ohakune Carrot,” photographer: Jane Treadwell-Hoye, 2014. Ohakuna is New Zealand’s carrot capital. Image: wikimedia.

Finally, it’s free, or almost free. CelluComp uses industrial leftovers: carrot peels from those machines that give you pre-cut carrots. Beets are next; there’s a lot of beet pulp after sugar production; 20% of the world’s sugar is made from beets. Brazil leads in sugar production (mainly cane sugar, the other 80%); but building markets may take note of Russia, France, USA, Germany, and Turkey, largest producers of sugar beets. Or, building big with carrots may happen in New Zealand, home to Ohakune, and the big carrot pictured above.

CelluComp. “We develop micro fibrillated cellulose based on waste streams of root vegetables.” https://www.cellucomp.com/

CommodityBasis. “Sugar Prices and Producers.” https://www.commoditybasis.com/sugar_prices.

Drury, Jim. “Carrots could be key to making greener buildings, say researchers.” 19 October 2018. Reuters. (Includes video.)https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-concrete-carrot/carrots-could-be-key-to-making-greener-buildings-say-researchers-idUSKCN1MT1VA.

Economist. “Making buildings, cars, and planes from materials based on plant fibres.” 14 June 2018. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/06/14/making-buildings-cars-and-planes-from-materials-based-on-plant-fibres/

Saadi, Mohamed. Research Portal. http://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/people/mohamed-saafi(355a81a6-210e-4f37-a495-a387b16506c1.html.

Statista. “Leading sugar beet producers worldwide in 2016, based on production volume.” https://www.statista.com/statistics/264670/top-sugar-beet-producers-worldwide-by-volume/.

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported Licen

Wake Up Call

Posted on January 27, 2017January 28, 2017 by Building The World

Year of the Rooster. Image: Jianzhi, wikimedia commons.

Enter the Rooster, herald of the wake up call. Each Spring Festival opens a new year, inspired by the characteristics of a new animal. The tradition of the new year, spiraled in 60-year cycles, began in 2637 bce. Emperor Huangdi’s minister Ta Nao is said to have suggested the Chia-Tzu or Kan-chih cyclical system. China added the Gregorian calendar in 1912, generally used from 1949. China understands long time frame. The Great Wall was built over the course of dynasties. The Grand Canal, longest continuous building project in history, broke ground in 600 bce; latest phase of improvement, to be completed in 2050, will feature design projects by students. Each new year is an invitation to a new generation to rebuild the world in an improved version; this Spring Festival, it’s the Rooster’s turn,a wake up call. Make it your ringtone.

For More: “Rooster Crowing Compilation” by YANG Edwin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwnzDT56VAU/

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.