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GEORGIA TECH URBAN CLIMATE LAB Exploring the connections between climate change and the built environment Atlanta, GA stone @gatech.edu
2013
Brian Stone is the director of the Urban Climate Lab (UCL). The UCL is a group of researchers in Georgia Tech’s School of City and Regional Planning who are exploring the connections between climate change and the built environment. Globally, urbanized areas account for the majority of the human population but have received relatively little attention in climate change research. The UCL integrates expertise in the realms of environmental science, urban design, and public health to develop strategies to manage and counteract climate change at the urban scale. Of particular interest to the UCL research group is the influence of land use on warming trends in cities. Land use is contributing to climate change through two distinct mechanisms. First, land use change in the form of urbanization is associated with increased energy consumption and the emission of greenhouse gases, serving to enhance the global greenhouse eeffect. A second and more direct mechanism through which land use influences climate change is through the displacement of natural land covers, such as tree canopy, by building materials with a greater capacity to absorb, store, and reemit heat energy. In response to the resulting “urban heat island
effect,” large cities in the US are found through in the UCL’s work to be warming at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole. We maintain the only long-term database of warming trends in large US cities and use these trends to identify the most rapidly warming metropolitan areas in the country. Through several ongoing research eeffects, the UCL is measuring the success of alternative land development and urban design strategies in abating the pace of climate change in cities. As demonstrated in a paper presently in review for publication (“Habeeb, Vargo, and Stone: Rising Heat Wave Trends in Large US Cities”), all measurable characteristics of heat waves have increased in large US cities since the period of the 1960s. In response to these trends, metropolitan regions will increasingly need to develop regional heat management strategies. UCL is exploring the potential effects of strategies focused on urban greening techniques (tree planning, green roofs, and other building-integrated vegetation), the use of cool roofing and paving materials, and the preservation and expansion of forested areas within metropolitan regions.