Urbanization and climate change impacts on future urban flooding in Can Tho city, Vietnam

Water sprays from an open fire hydrant in Brooklyn, New York, in the midst of a July 2010 heat wave that affected much of the eastern United States.In 2007 the New York City Department of Environmental Protection first teamed up with Alianza Dominicana, a Washington Heights community organization, to educate city residents about the appropriate use of fire hydrants and other ways

Chapter 5: Law and regulation

<p>Climate change and social-economic development are expected to compound climate changes risks. For southeast Asian cities, the occurrence of urban heat islands and extreme heat waves are a current and future concern for public health, well-being and household energy consumption due to increased cooling demands of urban residents and limited resources to cope. Urban heat island studies using remotely sensed imagery have already revealed that Vietnam’s major cities are characterized by strong temperature differences between urban and rural areas. As such implementing adaptation measures is paramount to limit adverse impacts of heat on urban inhabitants. While different adaptation measures are currently debated by the political authorities in Vietnam, decision-making is hampered by multiple scientific knowledge gaps and the lack of practical tools to support decision-making. This paper presents an approach to investigate the pattern and characteristics of the urban heat island in Can Tho City, located in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. This study investigated the relationship between urban heat with urban structure types, building density and blue and green spaces. An urban structure type approach was used to classify and partition the city into spatial units of different types of buildings (housing archetypes, functions, infrastructure), degrees of planning (regular, irregular), densities and open spaces on the official block geometry of the official land use plan and linked to remotely sensed land surface temperatures. The results in the form of a series of risk analysis maps at a planning relevant scale, confirm the effects of land uses and urban structures on local temperatures and allow policy makers and planners to better understanding of the relationship between the urban temperatures, functions and densities in order to reduce the UHI and promote more sustainable and resilient urban development.</p>

Sea-level rise from a warming climate threatens to inundate coastlines around the world.1 But some of the world’s most vulnerable coasts—those fringing flat delta plains, mainly in Southeast Asia—face the far more immediate threat of sinking land.2 Induced mainly by human activities on a local rather than global scale, this phenomenon, known as land subsidence, can outpace sea-level rise substantially. Indonesia’s biggest city, Jakarta, is sinking at an average rate of 5–10 cm per year,3 much faster than the global rate of sea-level rise, which clocks in at 3.2 mm per year, according to the recent estimates.1 Should subsidence in Jakarta continue unabated, the city could sink up to 6 m by the end of the century, according to JanJaap Brinkman, a water management specialist with Deltares Research Institute in Delft, the Netherlands.

Radley Horton,1,a Daniel Bader,1,a Yochanan Kushnir,2 Christopher Little,3 Reginald Blake,4 and Cynthia Rosenzweig5 1Columbia University Center for Climate Systems Research, New York, NY. 2Ocean and Climate Physics Department, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY. 3Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Lexington, MA. 4Physics Department, New York City College of Technology, CUNY, Brooklyn, NY. 5Climate Impacts Group, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University Earth Institute, New York, NY

Climate change, one of the prominent phenomena being experienced all over the earth, is continuing since the formation of the earth and will continue for decades. Climate change is more than global warming or sea-level rise; the rise in average temperature is only one indicator of broader changes also translating into extreme temperatures, drought, flooding, storms, rising sea levels, impacts on food production and infectious diseases. A large number of legally binding human rights obligations have been agreed upon by many nations since the creation of the United Nations. Although, the concern lies not just in climate change, but in vulnerable climatic variations and rapid changes in patterns also. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has recently concluded that ‘Climate change is a human tragedy in the making. Allowing that tragedy to evolve would be a political failure that merits the description of an outrage to the conscience of mankind’. This article sets out the relevance of sustainability and climate change in the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) region of India. Highlighting the multiple constraints of climate change and possessing the risk to human and potentially leading to their serious and widespread anthropogenic contribution to the increase in atmospheric CO2 and other GHGs. The article demonstrates the formation of urban heat island (UHI) over the area of Delhi NCR, footprints of urbanisation, frequent climatic changes, concretisation, and land-use conversions resulting into a threat to human health and well-being. Several international agreements on combating climate change as well as steps taken nationally to improve the environmental conditions keeping a focus on afforestation, green belt initiative, use of CNG, treatment of wastewater and light on serious damage done to Yamuna river. The recorded differential cooling and heating of various land use/cover, large temperature ranges are associated with bare land, built-up land, etc., the results suggest that methodology is feasible to estimate surface emissivity and surface temperature with reasonable accuracy over heterogeneous urban area, stating that north-south and west-east gradient of temperature demonstrates that the core of Delhi has a much lower temperature and UHI phenomenon. Extremely high-and low-temperature conditions in built-up land have direct and negative impacts on health conditions, and therefore are imperative to study. Thus, an attempt has been made in this research to analyse climatic variations and temporal differences in the city of Delhi.

Urban heat island effect: A systematic review of spatio-temporal factors, data, methods, and mitigation measures

Author index for volume 233

William Solecki,1,a Cynthia Rosenzweig,2,a Reginald Blake,3,a Alex de Sherbinin,4 Tom Matte,5 Fred Moshary,6 Bernice Rosenzweig,7 Mark Arend,6 Stuart Gaffin,8 Elie Bou-Zeid,9 Keith Rule,10 Geraldine Sweeny,11 and Wendy Dessy11 1City University of New York, CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities, New York, NY. 2Climate Impacts Group, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University Earth Institute, New York, NY. 3Physics Department, New York City College of Technology, CUNY, Brooklyn, NY; Climate Impacts Group, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. 4 Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University, Palisades, NY. 5New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New York, NY. 6NOAA CREST, City College of New York, CUNY, New York, NY. 7CUNY Environmental Crossroads, City College of New York, CUNY, New York, NY. 8Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University Earth Institute, New York, NY. 9Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. 10Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ. 11New York City Mayor’s Office of Operation, New York, NY

Revealing the response of urban heat island effect to water body evaporation from main urban and suburb areas

Can Tho city in the Mekong Delta is in the top ten areas affected by climate change. Therefore, assessing climate change impacts, social and economic activities require proposed solutions to respond to climate change. This study aims to (i) apply the MIKE 11 model (Hydrodynamic module and Advection-Dispersion module) to simulate the impacts of climate change scenarios on water resources in Can Tho city; (ii) calculate water balance in Can Tho city; and (iii) suggest climate change adaptation plan for sustainable social-economic activities of the city. The results show that when the rainfall changes due to climate change, the flow rate tends to decrease at high tide and increase at low tide. When the sea level rises due to climate change, the flow rate tends to increase at high tide and decrease at low tide. For 2030, the flow will decrease up to 15.6% and 14.3% at the low tide period for RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5 compared to the present, respectively. The flow will increase up to 63.5% and 58.9% at the high tide period for RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5 compared to the present, respectively. The water demand evaluation shows that the water resource reserve in Can Tho city meets water demands in current and future scenarios under climate change. While rainwater and groundwater can provide enough water in the rainy season, the city has to use surface water during the dry season due to a lack of rainwater. Of these, agriculture contributes the most water demands (85%). Eight adaptation measures to climate change for Can Tho city are developed from 2021 to 2050.

Temperature measurements for UK and world cities are often taken at local airports. These are usually on the outskirts of the urban areas and so not subject to the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Hence they are not representative of urban and city area temperatures. As most buildings are built in urban and city areas, designers need to know these temperatures. It is therefore very important to study the UHI effect and adjust the weather data used for design to include the UHI effect. This paper emanates from a project to measure the UHI effect in Greater Manchester, UK. With the advent of miniature temperature sensors and data loggers a simpler and cheaper shield was designed and produced. This paper describes the construction and testing of a new, low cost radiation shield that can accommodate a new, low cost combined miniature temperature sensor and data logger. The shield and data loggers are both tested and shown to give very reliable results. Practical application: The low cost, easily fabricated radiation shield with its miniature sensor—logger was designed to measure the dry bulb air temperature in Greater Manchester to investigate the UHI effect. The shield is designed to be mounted, with two stainless steel bands, on a lamppost column, typically at 4 m height. A telescopic pole can be used to unhook the sensor—logger for data collection. The shield can also be used to measure the dry bulb air temperature around buildings by fixing it to an external wall. Tests have shown the shield to perform well in comparison to a Stevenson screen and to greatly reduce any influence of solar irradiance.

Abstract. Along with urbanization, sealing of vegetated land and evaporation surfaces by impermeable materials, lead to changes in urban climate. This phenomenon is observed as temperatures several degrees higher in densely urbanized areas compared to the rural land at the urban fringe particularly at nights, so-called Urban Heat Island. Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect is related with urban form, pattern and building materials so far as it is associated with meteorological conditions, air pollution, excess heat from cooling. UHI effect has negative influences on human health, as well as other environmental problems such as higher energy demand, air pollution, and water shortage. Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect has long been studied by observations of air temperature from thermometers. However, with the advent and proliferation of remote sensing technology, synoptic coverage and better representations of spatial variation of surface temperature became possible. This has opened new avenues for the observation capabilities and research of UHIs. In this study, "UHI effect and its relation to factors that cause it" is explored for İzmit city which has been subject to excess urbanization and industrialization during the past decades. Spatial distribution and variation of UHI effect in İzmit is analysed using Landsat 8 and ASTER day & night images of 2015 summer. Surface temperature data derived from thermal bands of the images were analysed for UHI effect. Higher temperatures were classified into 4 grades of UHIs and mapped both for day and night. Inadequate urban form, pattern, density, high buildings and paved surfaces at the expanse of soil ground and vegetation cover are the main factors that cause microclimates giving rise to spatial variations in temperatures across cities. These factors quantified as land surface/cover parameters for the study include vegetation index (NDVI), imperviousness (NDISI), albedo, solar insolation, Sky View Factor (SVF), building envelope, distance to sea, and traffic space density. These parameters that cause variation in intra-city temperatures were evaluated for their relationship with different grades of UHIs. Zonal statistics of UHI classes and variations in average value of parameters were interpreted. The outcomes that highlight local temperature peaks are proposed to the attention of the decision makers for mitigation of Urban Heat Island effect in the city at local and neighbourhood scale.

Assessing the urban heat island effect of different local climate zones in Guangzhou, China

The Chishui River Basin, a vital waterway in Southwest China, has experienced rapid urbanization, leading to significant ecological and environmental changes, among which the urban heat island (UHI) effect is particularly pronounced. The UHI effect not only affects the quality of life for residents but also influences urban energy consumption and climate change, underscoring the need for in-depth study of its spatial distribution and contributing factors. The unique karst topography of the region further complicates UHI research, necessitating an investigation that can inform urban planning and sustainable development strategies. This study leveraged Landsat 8 TIRS satellite remote sensing imagery to examine the land surface temperature (LST) and UHI effect in the Chishui River Basin during the summers of 2016 and 2021. Employing the Mono-window Algorithm (MWA), the research quantitatively inverted the LST and analyzed its spatial distribution and the spatiotemporal characteristics of the surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect. The findings indicated a notable increase in average summer temperatures between the 2 years, with a 1.67°C rise from 2016 to 2021. Despite this increase, there was an observed reduction in the extent of SUHI areas, suggesting potential mitigation efforts. Additionally, the study revealed that karst regions were more susceptible to forming “abnormal” heat islands due to their distinct geomorphological features. The implications of this research are critical for urban development planning and the pursuit of sustainable urbanization in the Chishui River Basin. By understanding the thermal dynamics and their relationship with urbanization and karst landscapes, policymakers and urban planners can devise strategies to minimize the adverse effects of SUHI while promoting ecological balance and environmental health. Future research should extend the temporal analysis, employ higher resolution data, compare findings with other regions, and provide a detailed examination of mitigation efforts to enhance the robustness and applicability of the conclusions, provide stronger scientific evidence for the ecological sustainability of the Chishui River Basin.