You feeling hot? Blame high-rises

You feeling hot? Blame high-rises
The Times of India

Bangalore: Over the past five years, the city has developed about 100 heat islands. The choking cityscape has blocked wind movement in many pockets making temperatures — which should gradually rise and fall through the day — static in the islands.

The heat islands are a consequence of unprecedented construction of high-rises and withering green cover. A special task force report on the dwindling tree population, submitted to the BCC, details as to how the morning-midday-evening temperature curve remains a constant.

With high-rises, built with large quantities of steel, aluminium and concrete, coming up in high-density urban spaces — leaving paltry open spaces, the wind velocity has been altered and dispersed. Lack of wind direction in high rise-clogged localities generates heat, causing serious impairment of weather conditions, former environment secretary and chairman of the Task Force Committee, A.N. Yellappa Reddy, said.

Besides confining the heat generated to a near constant, heat islands are also known to raise temperatures by half to one degree Celsius. A recent Karnataka ‘State of Environment Report’ states: “Air circulation is also reduced due to dense residential development and loss of tree cover. The existing tree cover is inadequate to counter the rise in temperature.”

“The western Sun is relatively harmful in these islands due to increased heat generation. So vegetation with a good shade can absorb the heat,” Reddy said. The report on the city’s dwindling green cover recommends 50 scientific guidelines to improve green belt area and the city’s ambient air quality. One of the recommendations is the methodical planting of 5,000 trees in every BCC and CMC area.

So the Met office is not wrong if it insists this year’s sun has not been very different from previous years. Just that Bangalore, in the last five years, has developed heat islands making summer temperatures unbearable.

Monsoon in city
With the monsoon reaching parts of state, Bangalore received a brief spell 0.1-mm rain on Thursday (till 8.30 pm). The monsoon reached coastal Karnataka on Wednesday.