Essay on "Climate Change in America"

Essay 11 pages (3215 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

American planning in the next 20 years?

More and more each day, there is becoming ample indication of the more ecological impacts of recent climate change, from polar terrestrial to tropical marine environments 20 years from now. The answers of both flora and fauna expand a collection of environments and structural hierarchies, from the species to the community levels of community. Despite the continued doubt as to community and ecosystem routes which are under global change, this paper will expose a clear pattern of ecological change that is across systems and what it will be like 20 years from now. Even though we are only at a stage that is early in the predictable tendencies of global warming, ecological replies to recent climate change are previously obviously visible.

Top Executive Summary

Twenty years from now there will be many challenges that American Planning is going to have to face. Climate change is going to be one of this big issue years from now. Climate change is clearly turning into becoming an ever more vital problem in our lives. Obviously, it is imperative that sooner or later that we have to come to realize that the contemporary methods of man are placing an enormous quantity of pressure on the Earth that nature just will not be able take it all on. Some of the climatic issues that are emerging today, for instance global warming, ozone reduction and El Nino, will have unadorned effects on reef environments all around the world. Reefs really might start to give us an early sign of the effects of global climate variations, as small differences in sea temperature caused by climatic variations have already been shown to produce extreme responses from reef which are being caused by ecosystems.

One of these examples that will be an issue for a longtime is the urban island effect. The urban heat island effect, and its typically negative concerns of adapted temperature, wind, precipitation, and air excellence designs, is the main initiator of local climate transformation. Sustained urbanization of the global population will just accelerate additional change. The cumulative influence of urban heat islands on indigenous climates will eventually start translating to more extensive climate change, perhaps global, if left unrestrained. Parks are the leading and best line of protection that is going against these fast approaching changes. Urban parks and air that is just cool and clean modify and improve local wind movements, and better control rain patterns. Well-stagnated parks, in a diversity of sizes and forms, alleviate the influence of the urban heat island and diminish local climate change. Condensed influence of the urban heat island can extend or even avoid more prevalent global climate change as cities are continuing to upsurge in both number and size.

Introduction

Planning, also called American planning or city and local planning, is a lively profession that works very well when it comes down to improving the well-being of people and their societies by producing more suitable, equitable, healthful, well-organized, and nice-looking places for current and future generations. Planning really is a good thing in American planning because it really does enable people like civic leaders, businesses, and citizens to function as a more expressive role in making societies that will be able enrich people's lives 20 years from now. Good planning 20 years from now should do our community a great favor because in doing so it will help to generate communities that will be able to provide better selections for where and how people live. Planning 20 years ahead is necessary because it is helping communities to envision about how they want their future to turn out. In the long run it will be able to help them discover the right equilibrium of new growth and vital services, environmental defense, and innovative change. However, many are unaware that planning ahead will be more necessary now then any time in the history of our planet. With that said, climate change will more than likely be the greatest challenge facing American planning in the next 20 years for many different reasons.

Climate Issue: Urban heat

One of those reasons why it will be a challenge is because of the heat islands. Rendering to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), heat islands are really becoming a growing issue for millions of Americans that are living in and around cities (www.epa.gov/heatisland/).The urban heat island effect is really a positive temperature irregularity that happens over urban parts that are really relative to the surrounding non-urban places. The air over cities is becoming warmer because of the extreme attentions of paved surface, deep surface (both buildings and ground), and population (Ahrens 2006). The heat island effect could possibly as time goes on generate urban temperatures that will go from 2 to 10 degrees F (1 to 6 degrees C) higher than non-urban locations.

This will be an issue 20 years from now because temperatures that are being elevated can really have an impact on communities by growing peak energy request, air conditioning prices, air pollution levels, and heat-related disease and mortality. Much hotter air that is hovering over cities will also start to have an influence on local wind and rain patterns. By chance, growing vegetation in cities by generating or increasing parks and open space networks are able to start reducing the higher temperature effects that will be on urban heat islands. Urban parks and green space will counter the effect by cooling down the air by means of both covering and evapotranspiration (evaporation that be from the leafy areas of plants).

Through EPA's Urban Heat Island Pilot Project (1998-2003), many cities in the Unites States such as Salt lake City and Chicago, developed different approaches that will be able to start gibing an increase to green space and tree covers in their communities to alleviate their confined climate (www.epa.gov/heatisland/pilot/). Ever since 1996, Chicago Public Schools have been collaborating with the Chicago Park District and the Public Building Commission to make 80 new campus parks that are around the public schools. These parks are really made to give the pupils and the community with redesigning, recreational chance, and cooling possible. (egov.cityofchicago.org; www.museumsandpublicschools.org/Partners/cps.html).

One of Salt Lake City's greatest important developments certainly has been a three-acre Alpine meadow which is on the roof of the new conference center, a 1.5 million-square-foot structure that will occupy an entire city block. A waterfall down the front of the structure, and a long-flooded creek now is running along its length on North Temple Street. The roof meadow is a regeneration of the wild scenery of Utah Mountains, and it features 21 kinds of Utah grasses and 350 changes of native wildflowers. The field really demonstrates how constructive space can alleviate urban heat (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; www.lds.org/).

Climate Issue: The wind

Another challenge that America will have to deal with in the next 20 years involving the climate has a lot to do with the wind. Wind is another important, perhaps lesser known, outcome of the urban heat island effect. Areas that are urban normally start to warm up a whole lot faster and tend to reach much higher temperatures that are during the daytime than adjoining non-urban areas that are urban (Ahrens 2006). Since warmer air is much lighter and also has less dense than air that is cooler air, it rises and then causes lower distinguishing pressure that is all over the urban areas. As the wind starts to go up, warm urban air is starting spread all the way out and then cools, turns out to be much heftier, and then starts sinking all over areas that are non-urban, producing much higher impressive pressure that is . The pressure difference that is between urban and non-urban areas start to generate winds that begin to blow from non-urban high pressure toward urban low pressure. The reappearance of cool non-urban air to exchange warm, increasing urban air finishes the urban draft sequence (Spronken-Smith and Oke 1999).

Parks can also act as micro scale which is considered "non-urban areas" inside a city and therefore creating an even much smaller flow that is known as the "park draft." The daytime chilling that is happening because of evapotranspiration of park flora and the cooling that takes place during the evening that happens because vegetative concealment does not preserve heat as well as asphalt and buildings that generates a "park cool island (PCI) result" (Spronken-Smith and Oke 1999). The difference in temperature that is going on between park centers (particularly larger parks) and the adjoining city that is creating a distinctive pressure change similar to that discovered among non-urban and urban places. This pressure difference that is creating a breeze from park interiors to neighborhoods in cities, adapt to the urban heat island.

Over the past couple of years, New York State has been investing the lion's share of its money for New York City parks that are in two large waterside parks that can really… READ MORE

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