» Only on MyAJC.com: Georgia Tech planning professor Brian Stone Jr. explain how Atlanta is getting hotter.
If you felt the heat this summer in Hotlanta, you’re not alone — and you can thank the ‘burbs for making it worse.
New research out of Georgia Tech has for the first time confirmed just how much the metro Atlanta suburbs may exacerbate climate warming over time in the core city. Major cities have long been associated with the concept of “urban heat islands,” where a predominance of concrete and minimal amounts of vegetation help drive up temperatures.
An overabundance of asphalt, pollution-spewing traffic and clear-cut land for new development in areas surrounding Atlanta also has a measurable effect, and not just in the imagination of local residents trying to cool down, the research shows.
This comes in addition to what scientists already know: A warmer climate likely means more droughts and heavier, short periods of rain, leading to flooding — scenarios that could mean big changes in a region’s infrastructure.
Add a dollop of extra-strong heat, and communities will likely also see an increased chance of heat-related illnesses including exhaustion and stroke, which can be fatal especially among vulnerable populations. It can also add costs to the public health system.
The problem isn’t confined to Atlanta. Major cities across the nation are similarly feeling the heat-induced effects. Yet, the effect of warming in the suburbs on a core urban city had received scant attention until Tech planning professor Brian Stone Jr. and colleagues turned their attention literally to their own backyards.
Their findings have reverberated nationally as a wake-up call for cities and suburbs to rethink how they try to make their communities sustainable. And, for Stone, there is no place more in need of the alarm than metro Atlanta, where regional planning efforts have at times been greeted with skepticism.
“If Atlanta wants to seriously control its climate destiny,” Stone said, “it’s going to need to work with its neighbors.”
Most major cities, including Atlanta, are already warming at two times the rate of the planet. Any extra dose of heat from their neighbors will only spike temperatures in the future if that trend continues.
So, right now, the average high temperature for a July afternoon in Atlanta is 89 degrees, a rate that has climbed over the past five decades. By the end of this century, an average July afternoon may hit 103.
“It goes toward quality of life, now and in the future,” said Maria Koetter, the sustainability director for Louisville, Ky., which recently agreed to undergo a first-of-its-kind heat management study based in part on Stone’s research.
Using $135,000 in combined grants, Koetter expects the study to take 12-18 months. When it is done, the city will have a strategic plan to manage a warming problem that is the worst among the nation’s cities.
“We know our heat is going to continue to climb,” Koetter said. “There are increasingly significant health issues we want to address.”
Some of the solutions, in Louisville and elsewhere, seem obvious: increase the number of trees and green space; decrease impervious surface areas such as parking lots; and control construction development and density. Like many things, they have greater effect if done in increasing numbers.
Yet there is no coordinated response to the warming threat in metro Atlanta, and there are no current plans to begin one. Instead, local municipalities are working on their own to tackle various sustainability efforts. Some are further along than others.
Officials with the 10-county Atlanta Regional Commission, the area’s regional planning agency, have begun to gather information on the consequences of climate warming but have come to no conclusions.
The commission instead promotes sustainability efforts in its voluntary Green Communities program, which encourages local governments to reduce their overall environmental impact. Some practices encouraged by the program — such as so-called “cool” roofs that resist heat absorption and promote energy efficiency — could have an effect on warming.
Not everyone sees climate change as a problem. According to the Pew Research Center, only about 40 percent of Americans see global climate change as a major threat to the U.S., fewer than those surveyed in other countries.
Still, the Atlanta suburbs are not a vast wasteland with limited sense of place, either. A number of municipal governments, including the city of Woodstock in Cherokee County, have made an effort to promote green building, green energy, trees and green space within their communities — all things that could also affect the effects of warming.
“We definitely have plans to continue with sustainability efforts,” said Katie Coulborn, Woodstock’s long-range planner, noting that the city passed its first sustainability policy in 2010 and was the first municipality in Georgia to install a charging station for electric vehicles.
City of Atlanta officials, meanwhile, are considering a heat management study similar to Louisville’s. City officials have just completed a tree canopy assessment. A green roof has been installed on City Hall, and cool roofs have been added to one-third of the city’s fire stations.
"We are aware it's getting hotter," said city Sustainability Director Denise Quarles, whose department has launched an online portal to keep track of its goals at www.p2catl.com. "We are certainly going to do our part to lead by example."
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