Tag Archives: urbanisation

Mid-Atlantic suburbs can expect an early spring thanks to the heat of the big city

Urban heat island effect

Urban heat island around Washington and Baltimore would lead to longer growing season, warmer autumn and spring

If you’ve been thinking our world is more green than frozen these days, you’re right. A recent study has found that spring is indeed arriving earlier – and autumn later – in the suburbs of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The reason? The urban landscape traps heat in the summer and holds it throughout the winter, triggering leaves to turn green earlier in the spring and to stay green later into autumn. The result is a new, extended growing season.

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Trees in cities contain carbon – like anywhere else

Urbanisation increases the need to include city surfaces in assessments of the world’s carbon cycle. Already 4 percent of our planet’s land surface is urbanised and that percentage is likely to increase over decades to come. But although new research … Continue reading →

Houston may have a problem, other coastal cities likely do not

A new US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) urbanisation versus wind-driven pollution study does not make much sense -on a global scale- to us, mere science writers, who however by accident were raised by a couple of wild meteorologists … Continue reading →

Engineering population growth: part 1, the problem

Ask engineers and they’ll say there is an engineering solution to any problem. With respect to climate change and geoengineering that’s hotly debated, with respect to overpopulation it’s a novelty. Today the UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineers presented a report … Continue reading →