U.S. Cities Set Limits As Data Centers Feed the Urban Heat Island Effect

As Australian cities heat up, street trees are needed more than ever for their cooling. It turns out many are more resilient to heat than expected.— Read on theconversation.com/jacaranda-black-locust-and-london-plane-common-street-trees-show-surprising-resilience-to-growing-heat-in-australia-257247 #streettrees #trees #streets #heatisland #urbanplanning #Australia #TheConversation Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

In the concrete jungle of North Philadelphia, a garden blooms in vivid color. Flowers, vegetable beds and fruit trees thrive on a quiet street corner where the rattle of trains passing overhead or music escaping from a car’s open window are the only disruptions to the chatter of songbirds that flit between the trees. Estelle Vaughn can hear them through the windows of her house overlooking the Tioga-Hope Park and Garden, which she has tended for over 25 years. The small trees that were growing in front of the house during her childhood now have thick trunks, and their branches reach above the three-story home. In the summertime they cast a leafy shade over her front yard, where her cats wander between clay flower pots. Past them, pink and purple buds bloom at the feet of the trees in their small squares of exposed dirt along the sidewalk, leading to the community garden. This urban oasis is more than ornamental—it constantly works to cool the environment, reduces community health risks and serves as social infrastructure, all of which help to prevent deaths during heat waves becoming more frequent because of climate change. Creating more spaces like the Tioga-Hope garden is...

Combining data from all 8,919 large cities globally, pioneering study highlights extent to which trees cool our warming cities – and urgent need to green the most vulnerable neighbourhoods

Emerging research suggests datacentres create a heat island effect, pushing up temperatures in the immediate vicinity by as much as 9C