HR: 0800h
AN: GC21A-0134    [Abstracts]
TI: Urban Heat Islands and Their Mitigation vs. Local Impacts of Climate Change
AU: * Taha, H
EM: haider@altostratus.com
AF: Altostratus Inc., 940 Toulouse Way, Martinez, CA 94553,
AB: Urban heat islands and their mitigation take on added significance, both negative and positive, when viewed form a climate-change perspective. In negative terms, urban heat islands can act as local exacerbating factors, or magnifying lenses, to the effects of regional and large-scale climate perturbations and change. They can locally impact meteorology, energy/electricity generation and use, thermal environment (comfort and heat waves), emissions of air pollutants, photochemistry, and air quality. In positive terms, on the other hand, mitigation of urban heat islands (via urban surface modifications and control of man-made heat, for example) can potentially have a beneficial effect of mitigating the local negative impacts of climate change. In addition, mitigation of urban heat islands can, in itself, contribute to preventing regional and global climate change, even if modestly, by helping reduce CO2 emissions from power plants and other sources as a result of decreased energy use for cooling (both direct and indirect) and reducing the rates of meteorology-dependent emissions of air pollutants. This presentation will highlight aspects and characteristics of heat islands, their mitigation, their modeling and quantification techniques, and recent advances in meso-urban modeling of California (funded by the California Energy Commission). In particular, the presentation will focus on results from quantitative, modeling-based analyses of the potential benefits of heat island mitigation in 1) reducing point- and area-source emissions of CO2, NOx, and VOC as a result of reduced cooling energy demand and ambient/surface temperatures, 2) reducing evaporative and fugitive hydrocarbon emissions as a result of lowered temperatures, 3) reducing biogenic hydrocarbon emissions from existing vegetative cover, 4) slowing the rates of tropospheric/ground-level ozone formation and/or accumulation in the urban boundary layer, and 5) helping improve air quality. Quantitative estimates of the above will be presented based on recent and earlier meteorological, energy, thermal environmental, emissions, and photochemical modeling studies for California and Texas.
DE: 0345 Pollution: urban and regional (0305, 0478, 4251)
DE: 3305 Climate change and variability (1616, 1635, 3309, 4215, 4513)
DE: 3329 Mesoscale meteorology
DE: 3355 Regional modeling
SC: Global Environmental Change [GC]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting