Street trees
The contribution of latent heat flux to cooling dense urban areas
Lili Zhu (Guangzhou University)
Jinxin Yang (Guangzhou University)
Xiaoying Ouyang (Chinese Academy of Sciences, International Research Center for Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals)
Yong Xu (Guangzhou University)
Man Sing Wong (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
M. Menenti (TU Delft - Optical and Laser Remote Sensing, Chinese Academy of Sciences)
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Abstract
Trees are the most important natural factor to alleviate the urban heat island effect and the latent heat flux (LE) they release contributes significantly to urban cooling. In this study, the model ENVI-met was used to study the influence of building geometry on the LE exchanged by trees at the block scale in compact urban areas. The building density (BD), building height (BH) and sky view factor (SVF) were used to characterize building geometry. The sensitivity of LE to building geometry was estimated by multi-linear regression analysis. The following conclusions were drawn:(1) the LE of trees is sensitive to building geometry, higher during daytime than night-time in winter and the higher during night-time than daytime in summer; (2) LE changes as expected across the seasons, with LE larger in summer; (3) The shade affects the LE of a tree by influencing the solar irradiance; (4) In winter the average LE of a single tree is larger with 0.06 than 0.12 fractional vegetation cover (FVC). This study can provide useful leads towards further research to explore latent heat exchanges by trees at the street scale.