Study says trees counter half the world’s urban heating, but not in the places that need it most

WASHINGTON (AP) — Trees are countering nearly half the urban heating from pavement and buildings in the world’s cities, but they’re not doing enough cooling in hotter, poorer cities where it’s needed the most as the world warms, a new study found.

When averaged out over all the world’s cities, tree cover — by giving shade and releasing water vapor — cools an average of 0.27 degrees Fahrenheit (0.15 degrees Celsius), according to a study in Wednesday’s Nature Communications.

Without those trees, the world cities would warm on average by 0.56 degrees Fahrenheit (0.31 degrees Celsius) due to the urban heat island effect, where dark roofs and pavement absorb heat. The human-caused warming mechanism is distinct from climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

Researchers built their analysis of Earth’s nearly 9,000 large cities by measuring temperatures for segments of about 150 city blocks each. That allowed them to capture cooling effects for cities and neighborhoods so that trees in New York’s Central Park, for example, weren’t credited for cooling more built-up areas miles away in the Bronx.

About 185 million people living in 31 of the larger cities already feel an average cooling from tree cover of at least half a degree Fahrenheit (0.3 degrees Celsius). But study lead author Rob McDonald, a scientist at the Nature Conservancy, said poorer and hotter large urban centers that need it the most aren’t getting as much relief from higher heat, which can kill by confusing the brain, shutting down organs and overworking the heart.

Meteorologists measure the temperature difference between a city center and nearby rural area to find the urban heat island effect. Scientists in this study used a combination of weather station measurements, satellite data and computer models to see the cooling trees provided.

Little tree relief in hot, dry poor places

In 20 cities with at least 3 million people, residents feel less a tenth of a degree Fahrenheit (0.05 degrees Celsius) from cooling trees. In four cities — Dakar, Senegal; Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Kuwait City and Amman, Jordan — there’s such minimal tree cover that the more than 15 million people who live there get essentially no cooling from trees.

On the other end of the spectrum, McDonald looked at cities where tree cover cools at least 0.45 degrees Fahrenheit (0.25 degrees Celsius). Nearly 40% of cities in wealthy nations get that much cooling, but just under 9% in the poorest countries have that amount of tree relief, the study said.

The list of places that cool the most is topped by Berlin and includes Atlanta, Moscow, Washington, Seattle and Sydney, which have more trees. For example, Atlanta has 64% of its land area under tree canopy, McDonald said. Wealthy areas in North America have larger lot sizes, individual ownership and residents with more political clout, all of which contribute to more trees growing and providing larger cover, said Chris Greene of the University of Dalhousie in Canada, who wasn’t part of the study.

“There’s this inequality,” McDonald said. “When you look at cities globally, there are many, many cities, especially in developing countries, that have very low tree cover, and so I think the air temperature cooling number was a little less than we expected.”

Thomas Crowther, an ecologist at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, said every little bit helps. He’s in a region where cities have nearly no cooling from tree cover, often because water is at a premium.

“As up to 75% of the human population shifts towards living in urban environments, these buffering effects of urban vegetation are going to be vital,” said Crowther, who wasn’t part of the research. “But we have to overturn the devastating inequities in the distribution of urban trees, so that their benefits can be experienced by the low- and middle-income communities that are often most vulnerable to the effects of extreme temperatures.”

Planting trees won’t save us from climate change

The study’s authors said that cities, especially poorer and hotter ones, can and should do more to increase tree cover. But because of limitations in availability of water, land and proper species, combined with worsening climate change, at most they’d reduce future urban heating by 20%, McDonald said.

“Trees won’t save us from climate change,” McDonald said. “The climate scenarios are showing a much warmer world and there’s only so much of that that tree cover can help with.”

Still, planting trees has benefits beyond lowering heat. In 2019, Crowther and Jean-Francois Bastin in a study in the journal Science suggested planting a trillion new trees — on top of the 3 trillion trees already growing on the planet — to suck up carbon dioxide, not so much for their cooling.

“Planting trees does help fight climate change in multiple ways, but this strategy is not nearly enough to slow climate change to a significant degree,” said University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck, who wasn’t part of the study. “Only by transitioning away from fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy and battery storage can we hope to halt the climate change that is wreaking havoc around the planet.”

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