TY - JOUR
T1 - The impact of heat mitigation strategies on the energy balance of a neighborhood in Los Angeles
AU - Taleghani, Mohammad
AU - Crank, Peter J.
AU - Mohegh, Arash
AU - Sailor, David
AU - Ban-Weiss, George A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation under grants CBET-1512429, and CBET-1623948. It was also funded in part by the Rose Hills Foundation and the USC Provost's Office. George Ban-Weiss was funded in part by CBET-1512429 and 1752522.
Funding Information:
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation under grants CBET-1512429 , and CBET-1623948 . It was also funded in part by the Rose Hills Foundation and the USC Provost’s Office . George Ban-Weiss was funded in part by CBET-1512429 and 1752522.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2019/1/1
Y1 - 2019/1/1
N2 - Heat mitigation strategies can reduce excess heat in urban environments. These strategies, including solar reflective cool roofs and pavements, green vegetative roofs, and street vegetation, alter the surface energy balance to reduce absorption of sunlight at the surface and subsequent transfer to the urban atmosphere. The impacts of heat mitigation strategies on meteorology have been investigated in past work at the mesoscale and global scale. For the first time, we focus on the effect of heat mitigation strategies on the surface energy balance at the neighborhood scale. The neighborhood under investigation is El Monte, located in the eastern Los Angeles basin in Southern California. Using a computational fluid dynamics model to simulate micrometeorology at high spatial resolution, we compare the surface energy balance of the neighborhood assuming current land cover to that with neighborhood-wide deployment of green roof, cool roof, additional trees, and cool pavement as the four heat mitigation strategies. Of the four strategies, adoption of cool pavements led to the largest reductions in net radiation (downward positive) due to the direct impact of increasing pavement albedo on ground level solar absorption. Comparing the effect of each heat mitigation strategy shows that adoption of additional trees and cool pavements led to the largest spatial-maximum air temperature reductions at 14:00 h (1.0 and 2.0 °C, respectively). We also investigate how varying the spatial coverage area of heat mitigation strategies affects the neighborhood-scale impacts on meteorology. Air temperature reductions appear linearly related to the spatial extent of heat mitigation strategy adoption at the spatial scales and baseline meteorology investigated here.
AB - Heat mitigation strategies can reduce excess heat in urban environments. These strategies, including solar reflective cool roofs and pavements, green vegetative roofs, and street vegetation, alter the surface energy balance to reduce absorption of sunlight at the surface and subsequent transfer to the urban atmosphere. The impacts of heat mitigation strategies on meteorology have been investigated in past work at the mesoscale and global scale. For the first time, we focus on the effect of heat mitigation strategies on the surface energy balance at the neighborhood scale. The neighborhood under investigation is El Monte, located in the eastern Los Angeles basin in Southern California. Using a computational fluid dynamics model to simulate micrometeorology at high spatial resolution, we compare the surface energy balance of the neighborhood assuming current land cover to that with neighborhood-wide deployment of green roof, cool roof, additional trees, and cool pavement as the four heat mitigation strategies. Of the four strategies, adoption of cool pavements led to the largest reductions in net radiation (downward positive) due to the direct impact of increasing pavement albedo on ground level solar absorption. Comparing the effect of each heat mitigation strategy shows that adoption of additional trees and cool pavements led to the largest spatial-maximum air temperature reductions at 14:00 h (1.0 and 2.0 °C, respectively). We also investigate how varying the spatial coverage area of heat mitigation strategies affects the neighborhood-scale impacts on meteorology. Air temperature reductions appear linearly related to the spatial extent of heat mitigation strategy adoption at the spatial scales and baseline meteorology investigated here.
KW - Energy balance
KW - Heat mitigation strategies
KW - Neighborhood scale
KW - Urban heat islands
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U2 - 10.1016/j.solener.2018.11.041
DO - 10.1016/j.solener.2018.11.041
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85057309177
SN - 0038-092X
VL - 177
SP - 604
EP - 611
JO - Solar Energy
JF - Solar Energy
ER -