Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-25-2014

Description

Heat-related mortality in US cities is expected to more than double by the mid-to-late 21st century. Rising heat exposure in cities is projected to result from: 1) climate forcings from changing global atmospheric composition; and 2) local land surface characteristics responsible for the urban heat island effect. The extent to which heat management strategies designed to lessen the urban heat island effect could offset future heat-related mortality remains unexplored in the literature. Using coupled global and regional climate models with a human health effects model, we estimate changes in the number of heat-related deaths in 2050 resulting from modifications to vegetative cover and surface albedo across three climatically and demographically diverse US metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Georgia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Phoenix, Arizona. Employing separate health impact functions for average warm season and heat wave conditions in 2050, we find combinations of vegetation and albedo enhancement to offset projected increases in heat-related mortality by 40 to 99% across the three metropolitan regions. These results demonstrate the potential for extensive land surface changes in cities to provide adaptive benefits to urban populations at risk for rising heat exposure with climate change.

Copyright Statement

Copyright: ß 2014 Stone et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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