{"440871":{"#nid":"440871","#data":{"type":"external_news","title":"SCaRP professor Stone leads first urban heat-adaptation plan in major US city","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAs Earth\u0027s climate changes over the coming decades, global warming\u0026nbsp;will hit metropolitan areas especially hard\u0026nbsp;because their buildings and pavements readily absorb sunlight and raise local temperatures, a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect. Cities, as a result, stand a greater chance of extreme hot spells that can kill.\u0026nbsp;And yet despite the risks, few cities have plans in place to address urban heat directly. In the United States, says School of City and Regional Planning professo\u0026nbsp;Brian Stone, \u201cmost cities are ignoring the climate issue\u201d.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELouisville in Kentucky will soon become the first major US city to develop an urban heat-adaptation plan, says Stone, who is leading the project. The effort is driven by necessity. Louisville has the fastest warming urban heat island in the United States, and temperatures there have climbed by more than 4 \u00b0C since 1961. Part of the problem is that the city has lost 54,000 trees per year to insects, ice storms and lack of care.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIf Louisville implements the strategies that Stone recommends, it could become a testing ground that will reveal how changes to a city\u0027s physical surface alter the urban heat island \u2014 and its pioneering programme could point the way for other cities to follow. \u201cWe\u0027re already crossing thresholds that are pretty sensitive,\u201d says Stone. \u201cCities are going to be contemplating more aggressive action. But cities can measurably slow the rate at which they\u0027re warming over a decade or two.\u201d And that\u0027s pretty quick, he adds, because even if we eliminated greenhouse-gas emissions tomorrow, \u201cwe\u0027re still going to warm for a couple of hundred years\u201d.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":"","uid":"28044","created_gmt":"2015-08-27 10:33:51","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 02:27:41","author":"Jessie Brandon","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","publication":"college of engineering; ISyE; fellowships; grad students; student awards; orise; cdc","field_article_url":"","publication_url":"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/how-cities-can-beat-the-heat-1.18228","dateline":{"date":"2015-08-26T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-08-26T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"98141":{"id":"98141","type":"image","title":"Brian Stone faculty photo","body":null,"created":"1449178142","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:29:02","changed":"1475894712","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:45:12","alt":"Brian Stone faculty photo","file":{"fid":"193931","name":"brianstonephoto.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/brianstonephoto_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/brianstonephoto_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":117964,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/brianstonephoto_0.jpg?itok=N-HK1FT-"}}},"media_ids":["98141"],"groups":[{"id":"1224","name":"School of City \u0026 Regional Planning"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"1349","name":"Brian Stone"},{"id":"791","name":"Global Warming"},{"id":"139341","name":"green roof"},{"id":"139331","name":"greenhouse gasses"},{"id":"56681","name":"heat island"},{"id":"32991","name":"louisville"},{"id":"139321","name":"nature.com"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}