The Impact of Rooftop Vegetation on the UHI Phenomenon in Housing Projects: Baghdad City as an Example

This research investigates the impact of rooftop vegetation on the phenomenon of urban heat island (UHI) in hot-aired microclimates with an emphasis on housing projects in the context of Baghdad city. The methodology of this research relies on ENVI-met Headquarter 4.4.5 to create models that simulate and comparatively analyze the effect of rooftop vegetation on reduction UHI within housing projects. The analysis encompassed models of low-rise, mid-rise, and high-rise buildings. The simulated climatic parameters included the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV), air temperature, mean radiant temperature (MRT), reflected short-wave radiation, and humidity. The findings of this research indicated that rooftop vegetation can participate in the reduction of UHI phenomenon in housing projects, the most significant for almost all climatic parameters results were in low-rise and mid-rise buildings as compared to high-rise buildings.

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Britta Jänicke ◽  
Fred Meier ◽  
Marie-Therese Hoelscher ◽  
Dieter Scherer

The evaluation of the effectiveness of countermeasures for a reduction of urban heat stress, such as façade greening, is challenging due to lacking transferability of results from one location to another. Furthermore, complex variables such as the mean radiant temperature(Tmrt)are necessary to assess outdoor human bioclimate. We observedTmrtin front of a building façade in Berlin, Germany, which is half-greened while the other part is bare.Tmrtwas reduced (mean 2 K) in front of the greened compared to the bare façade. To overcome observational shortcomings, we applied the microscale models ENVI-met, RayMan, and SOLWEIG. We evaluated these models based on observations. Our results show thatTmrt(MD = −1.93 K) and downward short-wave radiation (MD = 14.39 W/m2) were sufficiently simulated in contrast to upward short-wave and long-wave radiation. Finally, we compare the simulated reduction ofTmrtwith the observed one in front of the façade greening, showing that the models were not able to simulate the effects of façade greening with the applied settings. Our results reveal that façade greening contributes only slightly to a reduction of heat stress in front of building façades.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Umberto Berardi ◽  
Yupeng Wang

In the last decades, several studies have revealed how critical the urban heat island (UHI) effect can be in cities located in cold climates, such as the Canadian one. Meanwhile, many researchers have looked at the impact of the city design over the urban microclimate, and have raised concerns about the development of too dense cities. Under the effect of the “Places to Growth” plan, the city of Toronto is experiencing one of the highest rates of building development in North America. Over 48,000 and 33,000 new home permits were issued in 2012 and 2013 respectively, and at the beginning of 2015, almost 500 high-rise proposals across the Greater Toronto Area were released. In this context, it is important to investigate how new constructions will affect the urban microclimate, and to propose strategies to mitigate possible UHI effects. Using the software ENVI-met, microclimate simulations for the Church-Yonge corridor both in the current situation and with the new constructions are reported in this paper. The outdoor air temperature and the wind speed are the parameters used to assess the outdoor microclimate changes. The results show that the new constructions could increase the wind speed around the buildings. However, high-rise buildings will somewhat reduce the air temperature during day-time, as they will create large shadow areas, with lower average mean radiant temperature.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vidya Varma ◽  
Olaf Morgenstern ◽  
Kalli Furtado ◽  
Paul Field ◽  
Jonny Williams

Abstract. Insufficient reflection of short-wave radiation especially over the Southern Ocean region is still a leading issue in many present-day global climate models. One of the potential reasons for this observed bias is an inadequate representation of clouds. In a previous study, we modified the cloud micro-physics scheme in the Unified Model and showed that choosing a more realistic value for the capacitance or shape parameter of atmospheric ice-crystals, in better agreement with theory and observations, benefits the simulation of short-wave radiation over the Southern Ocean by brightening the clouds. However, attempts to modify the cloud phase by directly adjusting the micro-physics process rates like capacitance tend to affect both the hemispheres symmetrically whereas we seek to brighten only the high-latitude Southern Hemisphere clouds. In this study we implement a simple prognostic parametrisation whereby the heterogeneous ice nucleation temperature is made to vary three-dimensionally as a function of the mineral dust distribution in the model. As a result, those regions with less dust number density would have lower nucleation temperature compared to the default global value of −10 °C. By using mineral dust as an indicator for ice nucleating particles in the model, this parametrisation thus captures the impact of ice nucleating particles on the cloud distribution due to its general paucity over the Southern Ocean region. This approach thus improves the physics of the model with minimal complexity.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Umberto Berardi ◽  
Yupeng Wang

In the last decades, several studies have revealed how critical the urban heat island (UHI) effect can be in cities located in cold climates, such as the Canadian one. Meanwhile, many researchers have looked at the impact of the city design over the urban microclimate, and have raised concerns about the development of too dense cities. Under the effect of the “Places to Growth” plan, the city of Toronto is experiencing one of the highest rates of building development in North America. Over 48,000 and 33,000 new home permits were issued in 2012 and 2013 respectively, and at the beginning of 2015, almost 500 high-rise proposals across the Greater Toronto Area were released. In this context, it is important to investigate how new constructions will affect the urban microclimate, and to propose strategies to mitigate possible UHI effects. Using the software ENVI-met, microclimate simulations for the Church-Yonge corridor both in the current situation and with the new constructions are reported in this paper. The outdoor air temperature and the wind speed are the parameters used to assess the outdoor microclimate changes. The results show that the new constructions could increase the wind speed around the buildings. However, high-rise buildings will somewhat reduce the air temperature during day-time, as they will create large shadow areas, with lower average mean radiant temperature.


1971 ◽  
Vol 10 (58) ◽  
pp. 101-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.P. Langleben

AbstractTwo Kipp hemispherical radiometers mounted back to back and suspended by an 18 m cable from a helicopter flying at an altitude of about 90 m were used to make measurements of incident and reflected short-wave radiation. The helicopter was brought to a hovering position at the instant of measurement to ensure that the radiometers were in the proper attitude and a photograph of the ice cover was taken at the same time. The observations were made in 1969 during 16 flights out of Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories (lat. 69° 26’N., long. 133° 02’W.) over the fast ice extending 80 km north of Tuktoyaktuk. Values of albedo of the ice cover were found to decrease during the melting period according to the equation A = 0.59 —0.32P where P is the degree of puddling of the surface.


1974 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 434-438
Author(s):  
E. M. Golubev ◽  
N. N. Ogurtsova ◽  
I. V. Podmoshenskii ◽  
P. N. Rogovtsev

2005 ◽  
Vol 36 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 381-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Rutgersson ◽  
A. Omstedt ◽  
Y. Chen

In this paper, which reports on part of the BALTEX project, various components of the heat balance over the Baltic Sea are calculated using a number of gridded meteorological databases. It is the heat exchange between the Baltic Sea surface and the atmosphere that is of interest. The databases have different origins, comprising synoptic data, data re-analysed with a 3D assimilation system, an ocean model forced with gridded synoptic data, ship data and satellite data. We compared the databases and found that the greatest variation between them is in the long- and short-wave radiation values. However, considerable upward long-wave radiation is followed by considerable downward short-wave radiation, so the total radiation component is partly compensated for in the total budget. The variation in the total heat transport in the databases therefore appears smaller (1.5±3 W m−2) as the average and one standard deviation. The turbulent heat fluxes estimated from satellite data have very low values; this can largely be explained by the method of calculating air temperature, which also produces an unrealistic stratification over the Baltic Sea. The ERA40 data was compared with measured values: there, we found a certain land influence even in the centre of the Baltic proper. The indicated turbulent heat fluxes were too large, mainly in the fall and winter, and the sensible heat flux was too large in a downward direction in spring and summer.


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