Urban Heat Islandby Justin Chung | 30-08-2017 22:59 |
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Urban Heat Island, aka 'UHI', is a densely populated metropolitan area that's a lot warmer than the surrrounding rural areas by as much as 2~3 degrees. For example, a large city like Seoul, Korea, experience hotter temperature due to crowded buildings, increased car traffic, and growing industrialization. Excess energy from insulating homes and offices have nowhere to escape and remains within densely populated areas. Skycrpers and tightly constrcuted building structures make it difficult for heat energy to escape to higher atmosphere. Eventually, air quality of these areas will deteriorate due to lack of proper air circulation. UHI will cause people to use more air-conditioning and energy consuming practices (i.e. air/water purifers) to cool down the living conditions. Eventually this will all lead to a vicious cycle of destroying our environment. How can UHI be cooled down? Many cities are implementing cooling down mesures, such as planing trees, building green/cool roofs at homes, and using heat reflective material on street pavements. Governments need active role in adjusting city struture to help spread the population evenly across all rural areas surrounding urban cities. More incentives and better infrastructures needed to encourage people to move outside of urban areas. More importantly, enviromental Source
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