As if Dubai weren’t hot enough, this Middle Eastern city has inadvertently made itself significantly hotter over the past 14 years, according to a new study.
Dubai’s construction boom is visible from space, with satellite photos clearly showing artificial islands such as Palm Jumeirah emerging over the past decade, and skyscrapers and roads swallowing vast tracts of land. The city has seen some of the fastest urban growth in the world, expanding by 10% on average every year for the past four decades.
So what effect has this had on Dubai’s weather? Emily Elhacham and Pinhas Alpert, from Tel Aviv University in Israel, used satellite and meteorological data to answer this question.
They found that the construction of buildings and roads had darkened the previously near-white desert, and greatly reduced the amount of solar radiation reflected back to space. Between 2001 and 2014, this darkening increased the absorption of heat, and resulted in average January temperatures rising by as much as 2°C. The results are published in the journal Earth’s Future.
To make matters worse, irrigation in the surrounding desert has increased humidity by about 4%, and the blocking effect of the high-rise buildings has decreased wind speeds by about 0.7 kph, making the extra heat even more uncomfortable.
However, the artificial islands have had the opposite effect: by replacing dark open water with lighter coloured buildings they reflect more heat back to space. Elhacham and Alpert observed average January temperatures in island locations fell by nearly 0.5°C over the same period.
