Chicago fights extreme urban heat with greener ideas

PBS News Hour

As a segment in PBS's Coping with Climate Change series, Hari Sreenivasan reports on the actions the city of Chicago is taking to mitigate climate change in an urban landscape.

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There is another CLEAN resource on this story, [link /resources/44670.html 'Green Roofs of Chicago'], that includes this video, an infographic, and more background reading on the topic of urban heat island effect. A good video to connect global warming to urban heat island phenomena and the serious health implications for urban inhabitants.
This video discusses strategies that Chicago is using to ameliorate the urban heat island effect that has been increasing since 1945. Building green roofs is one strategy currently being implemented as part of Chicago's green design makeover. Comments from expert scientist: It shows what is often referred to as a demonstration project, where they are testing the impacts of the cooling strategies. Theoretically, we know that the green roof and cool roof technologies will improve energy efficiency, and permeable pavements will improve drainage of run-off. But exactly how much energy can be saved or how much temperatures can be reduced cannot be determined with models alone, so demonstration projects are important as a source of data to evaluate their effectiveness.