In this article, we are going to talk about what urban heat islands are and how they contribute to climate change.
You might be wondering what an urban heat island (UHI) is. A UHI is the phenomenon where a city is much hotter than nearby rural areas. There are many reasons why these exist. The main reason is that there are more dark objects like roads and building, which attracts heat from the sun.
The impacts of UHIs are not that good. First off, there are higher air temperatures up to about 4°C (or 7°F). Hotter air is bad for obvious reasons. It also has increased health risks, mainly heat related illnesses.
As you probably guessed, climate change is impacted by UHI, although not directly. How it does is it makes it hotter out, making more people want to use air conditioning, which uses energy. This leads to more greenhouse gases (GHGs) being released. GHGs make the planet hotter, making it so people use air conditioning even more, emitting even more GHG.
As you learned, UHIs tend to cause hotter temperatures, which lead to worsening climate.
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