December 18, 2023
Assessment of Adaptation vs Mitigation on Heat Exposure Across 21st-Century U.S. Cities
Researchers examine adaptation and mitigation strategies’ effects on heat exposure across U.S. cities when deployed in isolation and in tandem.
The Science
Solutions that counteract urban overheating are required to ensure resilience to projected increases in extreme heat. A team of researchers combined regional climate modeling simulations with projections of city growth, greenhouse gas emissions, and population migration to assess the effects of adaptation (e.g., deployment of strategies in response to anticipated warming) and mitigation (e.g., reduction in atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases) strategies to reduce heat exposure for populations across U.S. cities by the end of the century.
The Impact
Results provide a quantifiable assessment of city-level heat exposure reduction from adaptation and mitigation when deployed separately and in tandem. This work provides important insight into city-level prioritization associated with adaptation and mitigation.
Summary
The study shows that adaptation and mitigation strategies deployed in isolation lead to the largest reduction in heat exposure for Northeast and Midwest cities compared with Southeast, Great Plains, and Southwest cities, relative to a contemporary start-of-century baseline. Results also indicate synergistic interactions between adaptation and mitigation strategies when deployed in tandem.
Principal Investigator
Matei Georgescu
Arizona State University
[email protected]
Program Manager
Sally McFarlane
U.S. Department of Energy, Biological and Environmental Research (SC-33)
Urban Integrated Field Laboratories
[email protected]
Funding
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Sustainability Research Network Cooperative Agreement Number 1444758 and the Urban Water Innovation Network. Support was also received from the Biological and Environmental Research program’s Urban Integrated Field Laboratories research activity within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science under Award Number DE-SC0023520. The authors acknowledge support from Research Computing at Arizona State University (ASU) for the provision of high-performance supercomputing services and from ASU Libraries for storage of model simulation output at https://doi.org/10.48349/ASU/3TYXZI.
Related Links
References
Georgescu, M., et al. "Quantifying the Decrease in Heat Exposure Through Adaptation and Mitigation in Twenty-First-Century US Cities." Nature Cities 1 42–50 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-023-00001-9.