Experimental and Theoretical analysis of the urban overheating and its mitigation potential in a hot arid city – Alice Springs

Abstract

Urban overheating has become a growing concern in the Northern Territory of Australia, where residents are suffering from excessive heat and frequent heatwaves. The characteristics of the local climate of Alice Springs and the impact of mitigation strategies are investigated in this study. Experimental campaigns were performed to determine the characteristics of urban overheating. Advanced microclimate simulations were performed to develop mitigation scenarios. Further, ambient temperature measurements have been carried out for 11 months to assess the magnitude and characteristics of the urban heat island. During the night, the city was warmer than the surrounding desert environment with an average close to 4.1 °C, while it presented cooler temperatures by 2.7 °C during morning hours. Microclimate models developed to assess the influence of the proposed mitigation strategies found a possibility to decrease the maximum ambient temperature of Alice Springs up to approximately 1.1 °C using the combination of mitigation strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Heat mitigation technologies
• urban heat island
• monitoring
• simulation
• urban overheating
• hot arid city

Acknowledgements

We thankfully acknowledge the Northern Territory Government for supporting the ‘Alice Springs Heat Study’ under the funding scheme of the Regional Network Grants, Department of the Chief Minister.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Northern Territory Government of Australia..