City parks could cool urban areas by 4°C
15 May 2007
Creating more parks and green spaces in urban areas could cool cities by up to 4°C – possibly enough to offset the warming from climate change – say researchers.
“If you look at infrared maps of cities, the woodland areas are 12°C cooler than city centres with no trees,“ says Roland Ennos at Manchester University in the UK, who carried out the study with colleagues.
Ennos's team used the city of Manchester as a template for their study. With two computer models – one to calculate changes in temperature and one to calculate changes in rainwater run-off – they investigated how the urban climate would change if world greenhouse-gas emissions continue to rise at the current rate.
“We found that the temperature in Manchester will go up by 4°C by 2080 if the amount of green area remains unchanged,“ says Ennos.
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