Kind: captions
Language: en
Phoenix Arizona
with little vegetation to begin with the
city is even hotter than the desert that
surrounds it
so they must find a way to cool the city
almost every summer we have a hundred
days or more over 100 degrees and
regularly each summer we're exceeding
110 degrees anytime we can find hot
ground and make it less hot that will
produce a cooling benefit with respect
to the air temperature
the idea is simple re-coat the roads
with a special sealant that will reflect
about 35 percent of the sun's energy
which means less energy is absorbed by
the asphalt and re-radiated as heat
in 2020 the city launched a pilot
program to cover 36 miles of roads in
eight neighborhoods
good reading here with our infrared
thermometer and we've got but does it
work
heat sensitive images taken from a
helicopter reveal a striking difference
the more reflective surface is as much
as 16 degrees cooler
and an MIT study projects that it could
lower the average temperature of some
cities by two and a half degrees
now we are seeing new approaches which
are really exciting for cities all
across the country we could wind up with
a city of the future that's cooler than
the one we have today
we can substantially cool down cities in
a relatively quick period of time
without major expenditures and so that's
really good news