Quantitative Analysis of Factors Contributing to Urban Heat Island Effect in Cities of Latin-American Pacific Coast
- Authors
- Palme, Massimo
- Format
- Article
- Status
- publishedVersion
- Description
Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI) is one of the most evident anthropogenic interventions on climate. During the last 20 years, a lot of research on monitoring and simulation of UHI was done by different institution across the world. However, there are some aspects not very clarified, for example, the decoupling and quantification of the different factors influencing UHI, depending on location. Some effort in this way has been done by researchers of the Asia-Pacific region. They identify three principal factors in the UHI formation: anthropogenic heat generation, impervious materials and urban geometry. The urban geometry effect could be divided in sub-categories, like radiation trapping, ventilation blockage, buildings' walls temperatures. In this paper the first factor, anthropogenic heat generation, is also decoupled in heat generated by traffic in the roads and heat generated by appliances and systems used in buildings. The importance of this subdivision is trying to quantify the weight of the electricity usage on the total UHI effect. In South-American Pacific coast, average environmental temperatures depend strongly by the latitude. In Chile the influence of the Humboldt current makes the climate mild in summer, milder on the Ocean than in the internal valley. In Peru, average temperatures are higher, but also natural ventilation is commonly used as the main passive strategy to cool buildings (residential sector). In Ecuador things change: Guayaquil has a cooling demand for the building sector very high. This paper considers the cities of Valparaiso, Antofagasta, Lima and Guayaquil. All these cities are experimenting intensive growth, that means in many cases densification, vertical growth and loss of green areas. Moreover, the increased standards in comfort and well-being of the South-American societies, implicate directly an increase in the electricity usage (including airconditioning) in all the mentioned countries. The increased incomes imply also an increase in the ownership and in the use of cars. In this paper, the Urban Weather Generator tool (UWG) is used to test the influence of the described main factors (density, vertical growth, loss of green, electricity and cars) on the resulting summer time UHI intensity. Results show the importance of the electricity usage on the resulting UHI effect (after heat generation of cars and changes in density), and the influence of the natural ventilation potential to both evacuate the urban heat and to reduce the cooling needs. Natural ventilation should be considered as an important strategy in mitigation of UHI, in addition to cool surface materials and city greening. Urban form and natural ventilation are connected to electricity (especially HVAC) usage patterns, mainly through the breeze deviations in the urban canopy and the consequent buildings' capacity to use it to cool inside.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303856882_Quantitative_Analysis_of_Factors_Contributing_to_Urban_Heat_Island_Effect_in_Cities_of_Latin-American_Pacific_Coast
- Publication Year
- 2016
- Language
- eng
- Topic
- LATIN-AMERICA
ELECTRICITY USAGE
UHI INTENSITY
- Repository
- Repositorio SENESCYT
- Rights
- openAccess
- License
- openAccess