The heat wave in Europe is not stopping short of infrastructure. This was plain to see in the heat damage to a runway at Germany’s Hanover airport this summer. “I assume that the architects complied with the respective German DIN standards, but these did not yet take into account climate change. At the moment, the ground is not able to cool down and is simply storing heat. The standards therefore need to be modified,” warns climate researcher Stefan Emeis from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in an interview with heute.de.
Stefan Emeis calls for a rethink in urban planning to be considered in the face of climate change. “I see the risk that towns and cities will overheat. They are becoming ever warmer because construction is increasingly dense. Such building density stores heat and hampers the airflow of wind,” he explains. The growing prevalence of air conditioning units is not a solution, as this increases the use of fossil fuel energy and therefore further accelerates climate change. “The way urban areas are built and designed needs to change. Roof structures are extremely important in this respect. We should move away from dark rooftops and red roofing tiles, instead painting them white or using light-coloured tiles. Everything that is dark will heat up,” says the climate researcher. Another desirable measure is to have more plants growing in towns and cities. “Green space is an advantage because water is absorbed by plants and evaporates through the leaves in a process that uses up a lot of heat, so vegetation essentially keeps things nice and cool.”
Stefan Emeis also highlights some other problems: because cold air is heavier than warm air, the former cannot escape upwards in urban areas. “When cities cool down, air circulation reduces, and the air remains at ground level – unfortunately so do the pollutants. So, it is not enough to just cool down cities, reducing the amount of pollutants being generated must also be a priority.”
