Abstract
Many cities globally are seeking strategies to counter the consequences of both a hotter and drier climate. While urban heat mitigation strategies have been shown to have beneficial effects on health, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions, their implications for water conservation have not been widely examined. Here we use a suite of satellite-supported regional climate simulations in California to show that broad implementation of cool roofs, a heat mitigation strategy, not only results in significant cooling, but can also meaningfully decrease outdoor water consumption by reducing evaporative and irrigation water demands. Irrigation water consumption across the major metropolitan areas is reduced by up to 9% and irrigation water savings per capita range from 1.8 to 15.4 gallons per day across 18 counties examined. Total water savings are found to be the highest in Los Angeles county, reaching about 83 million gallons per day. Cool roofs are a valuable solution for addressing the adaptation and mitigation challenges faced by multiple sectors in California.
Highlights
Many cities globally are seeking strategies to counter the consequences of both a hotter and drier climate
Our results show that broad implementation of cool roofs, leads to significant cooling of air temperature, and meaningfully reduces outdoor water use by decreasing evaporative and irrigation water demands
We present our results for the warm, dry months of June–October for 15 years (2001–2015) over the most densely populated regions of Northern and Southern California, including the 18 counties that comprise the San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Diego metropolitan areas (Fig. 1)
Summary
Many cities globally are seeking strategies to counter the consequences of both a hotter and drier climate. We use a suite of satellitesupported regional climate simulations in California to show that broad implementation of cool roofs, a heat mitigation strategy, results in significant cooling, but can meaningfully decrease outdoor water consumption by reducing evaporative and irrigation water demands. We assess the benefits of widespread deployment of cool roofs, a heat mitigation measure, from a water conservation point of view by focusing on evaporative and irrigation water demands. To accomplish this aim, we employ a customized and validated version of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF), coupled with an urban canopy model (UCM). Our results show that broad implementation of cool roofs, leads to significant cooling of air temperature, and meaningfully reduces outdoor water use by decreasing evaporative and irrigation water demands
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