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Painting your roofs white could help reduce effects of global warming | A new modeling study has determined that painting your roofs white can help reduce the effects of global
warming in the city. According to a report in Live Science, the study simulated
the effects of painting roofs white to reflect incoming solar rays and found that
it could help cool cities and reduce the effects of global warming. "Our research
demonstrates that white roofs, at least in theory, can be an effective method
for reducing urban heat," said Keith Oleson, the lead author of the study and
a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder,
Colorado. "It remains to be seen if it's actually feasible for cities to paint
their roofs white, but the idea certainly warrants further investigation," he
added. Cities are particularly vulnerable to climate change because of a phenomenon
known as the urban heat island effect. The asphalt roads, tar roofs and other
artificial surfaces that permeate cities absorb heat from the sun, making temperatures
in urban areas on average 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 3 degrees Celsius) higher
than in rural areas. "It's critical to understand how climate change will affect
vulnerable urban areas, which are home to most of the world's population," said
NCAR scientist Gordon Bonan, a co-author of the study. White roofs could reflect
some of that heat back to space and cool temperatures, because white surfaces
reflect most of the light that hits them, while black surfaces absorb most of
that light. Oleson and his team used a newly developed computer model to simulate
the amount of solar radiation absorbed or reflected by urban surfaces. The model
simulations, which are idealized representations of cities, suggest that, if every
roof were entirely painted white, the urban heat island effect could be reduced
by about a third. Such a reduction would cool the world's cities by an average
of about 0.7 degrees F (0.4 degrees C), with the cooling influence more noticeable
during the day, especially in the summer. White roofs could also cool temperatures
inside buildings, which could change the amount of energy used for space heating
and air conditioning. This in turn could affect the consumption of fossil fuels,
which generate many of the greenhouse gases responsible for Earth's warming. |
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