I don't have the training or expertise to fuel my motivated reasoning so as to disbelieve this emotionally disturbing result. Darn it.
"Albedo-induced warming effects of urban greening may outweigh the cooling effects of increased evapotranspiration."
#UHI
#UrbanGreening
#UnintendedConsequences
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023JD038764?af=R
@Doug_Bostrom
Ahhh, I see the problem with the study right off--it's entirely model-based, and the model doesn't include the effects of microclimates brought about by urban greening.
My experience has been that a greened area may be cooler than without the green, but the hot paved areas, claimed to be hotter because of "albedo warming" still obeys the laws of convection where the hot air rises and cools off as it does so.
Cool air is denser than hot air so there's a barrier between the hot pavement area and the cooler greened area, ergo microclimate where it takes a difference in air pressure to create air movement of one area into the other. What happens is a mini stationary front.
I have a fully operational urban greened space that I fought the Code Department hard and long to retain and I can actually feel the difference moving in and out of it. Measured, it ranges from 10 to 15 degrees cooler in the greened area.
Hats off to authors for publishing #OpenAccess so that we proles can discuss.
It _seems_ that authors are discussing -net- effects, and summation of an entire landscape of engineered high-albedo surfaces combined with absorption by typically lower albedo vegetation. What energy isn't reflected will be converted to something less easily rejected, and locally conserved, to escape by other means?
Certainly it's a fact that evaporation has a local cooling effect.
Hmm.
@Doug_Bostrom
It's clear that the authors are discussing net --numerical--effects --limited to-- temperature measurements then making the mistake that they indicate cause and effect when they do not.
It's not the first time a scientist makes that kind of mistake and I'll wager it won't be the last.
At least we can all agree that evap cooling actually works. If it didn't there'd be no such thing as manufactured evap coolers ("swamp coolers"). It would take a meteorologist to know what heating and cooling does to the air mass, and whether or not that air mass is already moving.
Scientists with specialties can be too specialized to see outside their areas of expertise...aka "to a hammer, every problem is a nail".
The nice thing is that as it's a fairly provocative claim and threatens to gore various (valuable and necessary!) oxen, the question is almost guaranteed to be wrung out to a fare-thee-well!
@Doug_Bostrom
Most definitely. Let the heated debates begin! ...but I do wonder if any of the debaters will have a meteorology background, ha. Or a physicist who is at least conversational with high school level grasp of Boyle's Law of gases, something I was hinting at when I chimed in. Cooler air is denser than hoter air, etc. It's what moves the atmosphere on a global scale as well as at a micro level.
Lead author looks early career and she's doing some interesting work in environmental engineering around various atmospheric messes we've created. More power to her!
But not a meteorologist, nor coauthors.
They'll probably collide with experts in other domains and that energetic synthesis will likely leave us all wiser. Or at least smarter. We're not really very good at "wiser."
@Doug_Bostrom
A woman in a dominantly male field is more of a mountain to climb to be sure, too.
"Working around various atmospheric messes" means that she'll inevitably encounter meteorology and the Cold War era study of "radiological monitoring" style of airborne contaminants (hurray for ye olde Civil Defense Department).
During the course of this conversation a memory of classic Star Trek series was jogged by the fact that there were no science specialists in charge on the Enterprise. There was just a Science Officer...which I thought at the time.
Today's planetary situations rather demand interdisciplinary sciences in charge of the specialists, so after all these decades, it finally makes sense.
@Doug_Bostrom
Oh dear--looks like my instance hiccupped whilst I was typing. Here's the correction:
During the course of this conversation a memory of classic Star Trek series was jogged by the fact that there were no science specialists in charge on the Enterprise. There was just a Science Officer...which I thought **ODD** at the time. 🤨
@ClaraListensprechen4
Wasting less talent is a cause for celebration in itself. :-)