- Title
- Investigating the relationship between human activity and the urban heat island effect in Melbourne and four other international cities impacted by COVID-19
- Creator
- Wai, Cheuk; Muttil, Nitin; Tariq, Muhammad; Paresi, Prudvireddy; Nnachi, R; Ng, A. W. M.
- Date
- 2022
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/187878
- Identifier
- vital:17168
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.3390/su14010378
- Identifier
- ISSN:2071-1050 (ISSN)
- Abstract
- Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our times, even before the onset of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. One of the main contributors to climate change is greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are mostly caused by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels. As the lockdown due to the pandemic has minimised human activity in major cities, GHG emissions have been reduced. This, in turn, is expected to lead to a reduction in the urban heat island (UHI) effect in the cities. The aim of this paper is to understand the relationship between human activity and the UHI intensity and to provide recommendations towards developing a sustainable approach to minimise the UHI effect and improve urban resilience. In this study, historical records of the monthly mean of daily maximum surface air temperatures collected from official weather stations in Melbourne, New York City, Tokyo, Dublin, and Oslo were used to estimate the UHI intensity in these cities. The results showed that factors such as global climate and geographic features could dominate the overall temperature. However, a direct relationship between COVID-19 lockdown timelines and the UHI intensity was observed, which suggests that a reduction in human activity can diminish the UHI intensity. As lockdowns due to COVID-19 are only temporary events, this study also provides recommendations to urban planners towards long-term measures to mitigate the UHI effect, which can be implemented when human activity returns to normal. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
- Publisher
- MDPI
- Relation
- Sustainability (Switzerland) Vol. 14, no. 1 (2022), p.
- Rights
- All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
- Rights
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Rights
- Copyright © 2021 by the authors
- Rights
- Open Access
- Subject
- MD Multidisciplinary; COVID-19; Green infrastructure; Livability; Pandemic; Urban heat island effect
- Full Text
- Reviewed
- Funder
- This research was funded by Victoria University’s Planetary Health Grant 2020, grant number PH128.
- Hits: 740
- Visitors: 763
- Downloads: 43
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Published version | 7 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |