Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

How to beat the heat in cities through urban climate modelling

  • Comment
  • Published:

From Nature Reviews Physics

View current issue Sign up to alerts

More than half the world’s population lives in cities, which are hotter than rural areas. Jan Carmeliet and Dominique Derome explain what physics modelling can show about how cities get hot, and how to cool them.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1: Understanding the urban climate at the microscale.

References

  1. World Meteorological Organization. Climate and weather related disasters surge five-fold over 50 years, but early warnings save lives - WMO report. United Nations https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/09/1098662 (2021).

  2. Ballester, J. et al. Heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022. Nat. Med. 29, 1857–1866 (2023).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Kong, J., Zhao, Y., Carmeliet, J. & Lei, C. Urban heat island and its interaction with heatwaves: A review of studies on mesoscale. Sustainability 13, 10923 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Doermann, L. Heat dome descends on Central U.S. NASA Earth Observatory https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151751/heat-dome-descends-on-central-us (2023).

  5. Kubilay, A., Derome, D. & Carmeliet, C. Coupling of physical phenomena in urban microclimate: A model integrating air flow, wind-driven rain, radiation and transport in building materials. Urban Clim. 24, 398–418 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Kubilay, A. et al. Advancement in urban climate modelling at local scale: Urban heat island mitigation and building cooling demand. Atmosphere 11, 1313 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Zhao, Y. Beating urban heat: Multimeasure-centric solution sets and a complementary framework for decision-making. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 186, 113668 (2023).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all those that contributed to this article directly or indirectly, and especially A. Kubilay, A. Rubin, D. Strebel and Y. Zhao. The authors would like to thank B. Voisard, S. D. Meadows and P. A. Johnson for comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by the SWEET-SWICE project, funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, the Future Resilient Systems project of Singapore-ETH Centre and the Canada Research Chairs program.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Jan Carmeliet

  2. Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada

    Dominique Derome

Authors
  1. Jan Carmeliet
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Dominique Derome
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jan Carmeliet.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Carmeliet, J., Derome, D. How to beat the heat in cities through urban climate modelling. Nat Rev Phys 6, 2–3 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-023-00673-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-023-00673-1

  • Springer Nature Limited

Search

Navigation