Modeling the climate impacts of deploying solar reflective cool pavements in California cities
Abstract
Solar reflective “cool pavements” have been proposed as a potential heat mitigation strategy for cities. However, previous research has not systematically investigated the extent to which cool pavements could reduce urban temperatures. In this study we investigated the climate impacts of widespread deployment of cool pavements in California cities. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting model, we simulated the current climate of California at 4 km spatial resolution. Comparing this simulation to 105 weather stations in California suggested an overall mean bias (model minus observation) of –0.30°C. Widespread pavement albedo increases of 0.1 and 0.4 in California cities were then simulated. Comparing temperature reductions for each scenario showed that the climate response to pavement albedo modification was nearly linear. Temperature reductions at 14:00 local standard time were found to be 0.32°C per 0.1 increase in grid cell average albedo. Temperature reductions were found to peak in the late morning and evening when (a) boundary layer heights were low and (b) solar irradiance (late morning) and heat accumulation in the pavement (evening) was high. Temperature reductions in summer were found to exceed those in winter, as expected. After scaling the results using realistic data-derived urban canyon morphologies and an off-line urbanmore »
- Authors:
-
[1]
- Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); California Air Resources Board; National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Energy Efficiency Office. Building Technologies Office
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1608258
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1402150
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231; 12-314; CBET-1512429; CCF-1539608
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 122; Journal Issue: 13; Journal ID: ISSN 2169-897X
- Publisher:
- American Geophysical Union
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION; heat mitigation; urban climate; cool pavements; albedo modification; urban heat island; climate change
Citation Formats
Mohegh, Arash, Rosado, Pablo, Jin, Ling, Millstein, Dev, Levinson, Ronnen, and Ban-Weiss, George. Modeling the climate impacts of deploying solar reflective cool pavements in California cities. United States: N. p., 2017.
Web. doi:10.1002/2017JD026845.
Mohegh, Arash, Rosado, Pablo, Jin, Ling, Millstein, Dev, Levinson, Ronnen, & Ban-Weiss, George. Modeling the climate impacts of deploying solar reflective cool pavements in California cities. United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JD026845
Mohegh, Arash, Rosado, Pablo, Jin, Ling, Millstein, Dev, Levinson, Ronnen, and Ban-Weiss, George. Wed .
"Modeling the climate impacts of deploying solar reflective cool pavements in California cities". United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JD026845. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1608258.
@article{osti_1608258,
title = {Modeling the climate impacts of deploying solar reflective cool pavements in California cities},
author = {Mohegh, Arash and Rosado, Pablo and Jin, Ling and Millstein, Dev and Levinson, Ronnen and Ban-Weiss, George},
abstractNote = {Solar reflective “cool pavements” have been proposed as a potential heat mitigation strategy for cities. However, previous research has not systematically investigated the extent to which cool pavements could reduce urban temperatures. In this study we investigated the climate impacts of widespread deployment of cool pavements in California cities. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting model, we simulated the current climate of California at 4 km spatial resolution. Comparing this simulation to 105 weather stations in California suggested an overall mean bias (model minus observation) of –0.30°C. Widespread pavement albedo increases of 0.1 and 0.4 in California cities were then simulated. Comparing temperature reductions for each scenario showed that the climate response to pavement albedo modification was nearly linear. Temperature reductions at 14:00 local standard time were found to be 0.32°C per 0.1 increase in grid cell average albedo. Temperature reductions were found to peak in the late morning and evening when (a) boundary layer heights were low and (b) solar irradiance (late morning) and heat accumulation in the pavement (evening) was high. Temperature reductions in summer were found to exceed those in winter, as expected. After scaling the results using realistic data-derived urban canyon morphologies and an off-line urban canyon albedo model, annual average surface air temperature reductions from increasing pavement albedo by 0.4 ranged from 0.18°C (Palm Springs) to 0.86°C (San Jose). We note the variation among cities was due to differences in baseline climate, size of the city, urban fraction, and urban morphology.},
doi = {10.1002/2017JD026845},
journal = {Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres},
number = 13,
volume = 122,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed May 17 00:00:00 EDT 2017},
month = {Wed May 17 00:00:00 EDT 2017}
}
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Figure 1: Maps of (a) the three nested domains (d01, d02, and d03) used in the simulations with corresponding spatial resolutions of 36, 12, and 4 km and (b) the three urban classifications extracted from NLCD at 30 m spatial resolution for d03. The innermost domain (d03) is the mainmore »
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