ROAD AND TRAFFIC
USING
SEAL COATS
TO REDUCE URBAN HEAT by Tanya Roe, Senior Consultant, Sustainability, City of Adelaide
Image credit – Catherine Leo Photography.
For the CBD and eastern Adelaide in South Australia, projections are: ♦ Annual average maximum temperatures to increase by 1.6ºC by 2050 and 2.3ºC by 2070 ♦ Days over 35ºC to increase from 20 days per year to 47 (38-57) days per year by 2090 ♦ Days over 40ºC to increase from 3.7 days per year to 16 (12-22) days per year by 2090 Bureau of Meteorology data indicates that 2019 recorded 38 days over 35ºC and 17 days over 40ºC. The urban heat island effect is prevalent in many Australian cities and has been shown to be exacerbated by climate change.
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September 2020 // Issue 16
HEAT MAPPING OF LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURES Due to urban ambient air temperatures being related to land surface temperatures, in 2018 the Resilient East climate change partnership (eight councils in central-eastern Adelaide plus the Government of South Australia), along with the City of Salisbury, commissioned The Collaborative Heat Mapping for the Eastern and Northern Adelaide Project. Graph 1 was taken from this study and depicts the average land surface temperatures of 1,100 locations across the study area, within 18 different land use type categories.
A key finding from the study was that non-shaded asphalt roads are 4ºC hotter than the average land surface day temperature, and they bank the heat and release it at night, becoming the hottest night-time surface. The study findings are consistent with national and international research and the related map can be viewed along with those of greater Adelaide on the Urban Heat Mapping Viewer portal. The City of Adelaide (CoA) is using this data to inform its planning and design. Residents and businesses can consult the tool to understand how heat exposed their properties and communities are.
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