Rural land surrounding urban areas could help cool cities by up to 32.9 degrees Fahrenheit, an [analysis in Nature Cities](https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-024-00091-z) suggests, hinting at a way to cool increasingly scorching urban areas.
In an attempt to understand how rural land cover affects urban heat islands — a phenomenon in which cities become significantly warmer than the areas surrounding them — researchers studied data from 30 Chinese cities between 2000 and 2020. They looked at land cover surrounding the urban areas and ranked the capacity of various urban-rural configurations to cool the cities.
Rural areas hold “great potential” for cooling urban heat islands, the researchers concluded, with the biggest impacts occurring within a six- to nine-mile radius of the urban boundary. Rural land in that range can reduce the urban heat island intensity by nearly 30 percent, they found.
The reason is a matter of physics, they write: Air warms in cities, leaving a low-pressure zone near the ground that then helps transport cooler air from surrounding rural areas. The rural areas then go on to absorb the heat.
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Rural land surrounding urban areas could help cool cities by up to 32.9 degrees Fahrenheit, an [analysis in Nature Cities](https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-024-00091-z) suggests, hinting at a way to cool increasingly scorching urban areas.
In an attempt to understand how rural land cover affects urban heat islands — a phenomenon in which cities become significantly warmer than the areas surrounding them — researchers studied data from 30 Chinese cities between 2000 and 2020. They looked at land cover surrounding the urban areas and ranked the capacity of various urban-rural configurations to cool the cities.
Rural areas hold “great potential” for cooling urban heat islands, the researchers concluded, with the biggest impacts occurring within a six- to nine-mile radius of the urban boundary. Rural land in that range can reduce the urban heat island intensity by nearly 30 percent, they found.
The reason is a matter of physics, they write: Air warms in cities, leaving a low-pressure zone near the ground that then helps transport cooler air from surrounding rural areas. The rural areas then go on to absorb the heat.
Read more here: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2024/08/03/urban-heat-islands-rural-cooling/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com](https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2024/08/03/urban-heat-islands-rural-cooling/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com)