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An urban heat island is a phenomenon where these surface temperature deviations and air in the lowest levels of the atmosphere are concentrated in urban areas and those immediately downwind, and often are more pronounced at night than during the day, rather than surrounding suburban and especially rural areas.
The urban environment has two atmosphere layers, besides the planetary boundary layer (PBL) outside and extending well above the city: (1) The urban boundary layer is due to the spatially integrated heat and moisture exchanges between the city and its overlying air. (2) The surface of the city corresponds to the level of the urban canopy layer.
A definition of urban heat island is: "The relative warmth of a city compared with surrounding rural areas." [14]: 2926 This relative warmth is caused by "heat trapping due to land use, the configuration and design of the built environment, including street layout and building size, the heat-absorbing properties of urban building materials, reduced ventilation, reduced greenery and water ...
At the same time, population growth, urbanization and industrialization continue to cause pollution and depletion of water sources. In the developed world, pollution of water sources is threatening the sustainability of urban water systems. Climate change is likely to affect all urban centers, either with increasingly heavy storms or with ...
Thermal pollution, sometimes called "thermal enrichment", is the degradation of water quality by any process that changes ambient water temperature.Thermal pollution is the rise or drop in the temperature of a natural body of water caused by human influence.
All of these help promote solutions to common environmental issues such as greenhouse gases, urban climate issues, water pollution and waste, energy consumption, and health and wellbeing of site users. The main focus is hydrology, soils, vegetation, materials, and human health and well-being.
The effects of climate change on the water cycle have important negative effects on the availability of freshwater resources, as well as other water reservoirs such as oceans, ice sheets, the atmosphere and soil moisture. The water cycle is essential to life on Earth and plays a large role in the global climate system and ocean circulation.
Kennedy and fellow researchers have produced a clear definition in the 2007 paper The Changing Metabolism of Cities claiming that urban metabolism is "the sum total of the technical and socio-economic process that occur in cities, resulting in growth, production of energy and elimination of waste."