Cooling effects of white roofs

摘要

Increasing the ability of urban roofs and pavements to reflect the Sun's heat would decrease the average global temperature by less than 0.1℃ over the next 300 years, according to climate simulations. Hashem Akbari and his colleagues at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, used a global climate model, along with estimates of the extent of the world's urban areas, to predict what would happen if urban solar reflectivity rose from roughly 15% to 25%.