Identification

Title

Contrasting urban and rural heat stress responses to climate change

Abstract

Hot temperatures in combination with high humidity cause human discomfort and may increase morbidity and mortality. A global climate model with an embedded urban model is used to explore the urban-rural contrast in the wet-bulb globe temperature, a heat stress index accounting for temperature and humidity. Wet-bulb globe temperatures are calculated at each model time step to resolve the heat stress diurnal cycle. The model simulates substantially higher heat stress in urban areas compared to neighbouring rural areas. Urban humidity deficit only weakly offsets the enhanced heat stress due to the large night-time urban heat island. The urban-rural contrast in heat stress is most pronounced at night and over mid-latitudes and subtropics. During heatwaves, the urban heat stress amplification is particularly pronounced. Heat stress strongly increases with doubled CO₂ concentrations over both urban and rural surfaces. The tropics experience the greatest increase in number of high-heat-stress nights, despite a relatively weak ∼2°C warming. Given the lack of a distinct annual cycle and high relative humidity, the modest tropical warming leads to exceedance of the present-day record levels during more than half of the year in tropical regions, where adaptive capacity is often low. While the absolute urban and rural heat stress response to 2 × CO₂ is similar, the occurrence of nights with extremely high heat stress increases more in cities than surrounding rural areas.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7765g1h

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2012-02-14T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact