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Record Heat Forces Cities To Expand Public AC
Too big to chill? // Illustration by Kate Walker
Several municipalities and organizations are developing cutting-edge ways to keep residents cool at scale.
Why It Refreshes: This past August was the hottest month in recorded history... and the climate won’t be getting any better on its own. In fact, NYC is expected to have a subtropical climate by 2050, comparable to Alabama. With heat contributing to an excess of 25,000 deaths in Europe alone, figuring out how to cool down city blocks might become one of the most pressing priorities for local governments over the next few years.
Between The Mist: Ideas being explored to cool down cities range from the simply brilliant to the wildly bonkers. Bloomberg breaks down a few:
Phoenix has added reflective coating to streets and roofs to minimize heat from the sun, while several Chinese cities have outfitted buildings with giant misters.
Madrid is experimenting with katabatic towers — cylindrical structures that use hoses to spray water from the top, cooling the air and letting it fall down “like bathwater spiraling down a drainpipe.” A big enough one could cool an entire street.
Researchers at TU Delft in the Netherlands are testing turning offshore wind turbines into giant fans that can “spray plumes of seawater into the atmosphere, which onshore winds can carry into cities.”
Non-profit organization Reflective is testing cloud brightening in Australia, which involves spraying saltwater to act as “nuclei for clouds to condense around, allowing low-lying marine clouds to become more dense and reflective.”
Some startups, like Make Sunsets, are trialing geoengineering, such as finding scalable ways to safely block sunlight in the atmosphere — including releasing chalk dust at low altitudes to create a reflective layer.
Last Splash: Bloomberg notes that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for cooling cities — it all depends on their unique climates and topographies. What works in LA won’t necessarily work in Paris. Whatever is used will hopefully at least help offset some of the heat dumping that happens as everyone turns up their AC.
The Future: Figuring out how to cool cities could soon become one of the biggest policy pitches for local politicians. Welcome to the Chill Party.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.