There hasn’t been much good news on the climate front lately. We’ve just survived a record hot summer, and the very expensive natural disasters continue.
Yet here is something positive — painting roofs white can significantly lower urban temperatures.
This revelation came from London, which is expecting a changing climate to bring hotter and drier summers, with an average summer’s day to be about 5.4 F (3 C) hotter by 2050. But a recent study found that painting London’s rooftops white could help reduce the city’s outdoor temperature by up to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).
“We comprehensively tested multiple methods that cities like London could use to adapt to and mitigate warming temperatures, and found that cool roofs were the best way to keep temperatures down during extremely hot summer days,” lead author Oscar Brousse, a lecturer at University College London who specializes in urban meteorology and environmental modeling, said in a statement. “Other methods had various important side benefits, but none were able to reduce outdoor urban heat to nearly the same level.”
Solutions to our problems being caused by a changing climate are out there. We simply have to look for them.
For the complete story, visit https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/london-climate-change-roofs-white .