Urban growth is leading to more intense droughts for most of the world’s cities – and Sydney is a case study for areas at risk

Wed, 4 Sep 2024 11:28:49 +1000

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://theconversation.com/urban-growth-is-leading-to-more-intense-droughts-for-most-of-the-worlds-cities-and-sydney-is-a-case-study-for-areas-at-risk-236315>

"The growth of cities worldwide is contributing to more intense drought
conditions in many cities, including Sydney, a new Chinese study has found.
This is adding to urban heat and water stress. These important findings point
to the need to improve how we design and build cities to make them more
liveable and resilient.

The study has used a massive 40 years of weather station data collected from
urban and rural areas around the globe. Larger cities and those with less green
cover are associated with even greater worsening of drought.

The Greater Sydney region was one of six cities selected from around the world
for additional, more detailed model simulations. These explore how urbanisation
is making local drought conditions worse in Sydney and the other cities. On
January 4 2020, the western Sydney suburb of Penrith was the hottest place on
Earth that day. It reached a scorching 48.9°C degrees.

A few parts of the world, such as the US west coast, Mediterranean and
South-East Queensland, bucked the global trends. This was attributed to cities
that cluster near the coast in areas where the ocean cools the land and sea
breezes bring moisture to these cities."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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