Comprehensive studies comparing impacts of building and street levels interventions on air temperature at metropolitan scales are still lacking despite increased urban heat-related mortality and morbidity. We therefore model the impact of 9 interventions on air temperatures at 2 m during 2 hot days from the summer 2018 in the Greater London Authority area using the WRF BEP-BEM climate model. We find that on average cool roofs most effectively reduce temperatures (~~-1.2~^∘C), outperforming green roofs (~~0~^∘C), solar panels (~~-0.5~^∘C) and street level vegetation (~~-0.3~^∘C). Application of air conditioning across London (United Kingdom) increases air temperatures by ~~+0.15~^∘C. A practicable deployment of solar panels could cover its related energetic consumption. Current practicable deployments of green roofs and solar panels are ineffective at large scale reduction of temperatures. We provide a detailed decomposition of the surface energy balance to explain changes in air temperature and guide future decision-making.
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Brousse et al. (2024) studied this question.
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