{"id":352929,"date":"2024-12-02T08:32:50","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T07:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=352929"},"modified":"2024-12-02T08:32:52","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T07:32:52","slug":"gosh-really-nasa-data-reveals-role-of-green-spaces-in-cooling-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=352929","title":{"rendered":"Gosh, really? NASA data reveal’s role of green spaces in cooling cities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Anthony Watts<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the \u201cwho whooda thunkit?<\/em>\u201d department and NASA Goddard come this bit of obvious science complete with a picture proudly proclaiming, \u201cit\u2019s hot and dry in the desert.\u201d Government \u201cscience\u201d at its best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By <\/strong>Madeleine Gregory<\/strong><\/a>
NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As any urban dweller who has lived through a heat wave knows, a shady tree can make all the difference. But what happens when there\u2019s no shade available?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent study<\/a> in Nature Communications <\/em>used NASA satellite data to identify a major gap in global resilience to climate change: cities in the Global South have far less green space \u2014 and therefore less cooling capacity \u2014 than cities in the Global North. The terms Global North and Global South were used in the study to distinguish developed countries (mostly in the Northern Hemisphere) from developing nations (mostly in the Southern Hemisphere).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cities tend to be hotter than nearby rural areas because of the urban heat island effect. Heat-trapping dark surfaces such as sidewalks, buildings, and roads absorb heat from the Sun\u2019s rays, which raises the temperature of the city. Extreme heat poses serious health threats for urban residents, including dehydration, heat stroke, and even death. Though not a cure-all, greenery provides shade and releases moisture into the air, cooling the surroundings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCities can strategically prioritize developing new green spaces in areas that have less green space,\u201d said Christian Braneon<\/a>, a climate scientist at NASA\u2019s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York who was not affiliated with this study. \u201cSatellite data can be really helpful for this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An international team of researchers led by Yuxiang Li, a doctoral student at Nanjing University, analyzed the 500 largest cities in the world to compare their cooling capacities. They used data from the Landsat 8 satellite<\/a>, jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, to determine how effective green space was at cooling each city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, they calculated the average land surface temperature for the hottest month of 2018 for each city, as well as the average of the hottest months from 2017 to 2019. Next, the researchers used a metric called the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to map how much green space each city had. The NDVI relies on the fact that healthy vegetation absorbs red light and reflects infrared light: the ratio of these wavelengths can show the density of healthy vegetation in a given satellite image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers found that cities in the Global South have just 70% of the greenery-related cooling capacity of cities in the Global North. The green spaces in an average Global South city cool the temperature by about 4.5 F (2.5 C). In an average Global North city, that cooling capacity is 6.5 F (3.6 C). This compounds an existing problem: cities in the South tend to be at lower latitudes (that is, nearer to the Equator), which are predicted to see more heat extremes in the coming years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s already clear that Global South countries will be impacted by heat waves, rising temperatures, and climatic extremes more than their Global North counterparts,\u201d said Chi Xu, a professor of ecology at Nanjing University and a co-author of the study. The Global South has less capacity to adapt to heat because air conditioning is less common, and power outages are more frequent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do cities in the Global South struggle to stay cool? Cities in the Global South tend to have less green space than cities in the Global North. This mirrors studies of the disparities within cities, sometimes referred to as the \u201cluxury effect\u201d: wealthier neighborhoods tend to have more green space than poorer neighborhoods. \u201cWealthier cities also have more urban green spaces than the poorest cities,\u201d Chi said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the NASA and U.S. Geological Survey\u2019s Landsat 8 satellite captured this natural color image of Sanaa, Yemen, on June 8, 2024. Sanaa, which has a hot, dry climate and little green space, had the second-lowest cooling capacity of 500 cities studied in a paper recently published in the journal Nature Communications. Wanmei Liang, NASA Earth Observatory<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s unlikely that urban planners can close the gap between the study\u2019s worst-performing city (Mogadishu, Somalia) and the best-performing one (Charlotte, North Carolina).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mogadishu is a dense city with a dry climate that limits vegetation growth. Still, there\u2019s a lot that each city can learn from its neighbors. Within a given region, the researchers identified the city with the greatest cooling capacity and used that as a goal. They calculated the difference between the best-performing city in the region and every city nearby to get the potential additional cooling capacity. They found that cities\u2019 average cooling capacity could be increased substantially \u2014 to as much as 18 F (10 C) \u2014 by systematically increasing green space quantity and quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow you utilize green space is really going to vary depending on the climate and the urban environment you\u2019re focused on,\u201d said Braneon, whose research at NASA focuses on climate change and urban planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greener cities in the U.S. and Canada have lower population densities. However, fewer people per square mile isn\u2019t necessarily good for the environment: residents in low-density cities rely more on cars, and their houses tend to be bigger and less efficient. Braneon noted that there\u2019s a suite of solutions beyond just planting trees or designating parks: Cities can increase cooling capacity by creating water bodies, seeding green roofs, and painting roofs or pavement lighter colors to reflect more light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a global study like this, urban planners can compare strategies for cities within the same region or with similar densities. \u201cFor newly urbanized areas that aren\u2019t completely built out, there\u2019s a lot of room to still change the design,\u201d Braneon said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Journal \u2013 Nature Communications
The Paper: DOI 10.1038\/s41467-024-51355-0 <\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the \u201cwho whooda thunkit?\u201d department and NASA Goddard come this bit of obvious science complete with a picture proudly proclaiming, \u201cit\u2019s hot and dry in the desert.\u201d Government \u201cscience\u201d at its best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":352934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818056,691818832,691829171,691819263],"class_list":["post-352929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-climate-change","tag-heat-wave","tag-nasa-goddard","tag-urban-heat-island-effect","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/0causes-of-urban-heat-islan-effect.jpg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1tOp","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":280313,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=280313","url_meta":{"origin":352929,"position":0},"title":"NASA\u2019s First Asteroid Sample Has Landed, Now Secure in Clean Room","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"09\/25\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"After years of anticipation and hard work by NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx\u00a0(Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security \u2013 Regolith Explorer) team, a capsule of rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu finally is on Earth. 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