Sydney Science Park

The Heat Island Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory works to cool buildings, cities, and the planet by making roofs, pavements, and cars cooler in the sun.

Includes "turn down the heat: strategy and action plan"; reports; media releases.

Over the past seven years more than 100 research projects at the Co-operative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living, in collaboration with industry across Australia, have pondered a very big question: How do we build future cities that are sustainable, liveable and affordable?

Scientists predict Western Sydney will be hit with around 10 extra days of extreme heat each year between now and 2040. How do we plan for this future?

The City of Sydney is increasingly experiencing the UHI effect due to its numerous urban development projects
and changes in climate. In the Sydney context, this ongoing research aims to explore the most heat resilient
urban features at precinct scale. It covers five high density precincts in central Sydney and is based on a
nocturnal remote-sensing thermal image of central Sydney taken on 6 February 2009. Comparing the surface
temperature of streetscapes and buildings’ rooftops (dominant urban horizontal surfaces), indicates that open
public spaces and particularly streetscapes are the most sensitive urban elements to the sUHI effect. The
correlations between street network intensity, open public space plot ratio, urban greenery plot ratio and sUHI
effect is being analysed in Sydney’s high density precincts. Results indicate that higher open space plot ratio and
street network intensity correlate significantly to higher sUHI effect at precinct scale. However, higher urban
greenery plot ratio can effectively mitigate the sUHI effect in high density precincts.

Video presentations from Penrith Council's Homes and Heat: Inspiring Design, Building and Retrofit Solutions event on inspiration and tips on how to make a home more efficient, sustainable and cooler in summer.

The Hub is one of the most sustainable community buildings in NSW. It is one of the first examples of single story CLT construction in Australia. This highly innovative prefabricated solid timber structural system can be carbon neutral. A geothermal heating and cooling system reduces C02 emissions for air conditions by 50%. The rooftop photovoltaic array offsets a significant amount of the buildings lighting energy requirement, saving 25.6 tonnes in CO2 emissions.

Increasing extreme heat will have profound impacts on people, industries and ecosystems in Western Sydney. CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology projections estimate that the average number of days over 35 could increase by up to five times without strong climate policies from a historical average of 11 up to 52 days by 2090. Some parts of Western Sydney will experience even more extreme heat days.

Impacts of climate change - Urban Heat

Planning how we design and develop our cities, towns and suburbs is critical to building more resilient and cooler communities.

Cooler Places is an online resource to help town planners, urban designers, developers, councils and the community reduce urban heat. It provides clear guidance on how to use urban structure, greening, water and cool materials as building blocks to create cooler, more resilient places to live.

This climate change impact report from the Standing Committee on Natural Resource
Management (Climate Change) presented to the NSW Parliament's Legislative Assembly. The report includes sections on the Urban Heat Island effect and its impact on Western Sydney.

EPA (USA); this website contains Environmental topics; Laws & Regulations; impacts; resources; webcasts; reducing the risks.

Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water's Your Home website is a guide to environmentally sustainable home. ‘Passive design’ is design that works with the local climate to maintain a comfortable temperature in the home. Good passive design should reduce or eliminate the need for additional heating or cooling depending on your location and often relies on an active occupant to work properly.

Cities worldwide are increasingly facing the challenge of managing urban heat islands (UHIs), where densely built environments experience higher temperatures than their rural counterparts. The CSIRO's Darwin Living Lab looks to address this and other heat-related issues.

Global warming has led to higher summer temperatures across Sydney over the past 30 years. However, our data analysis shows very hot summer days are becoming much more common in Western Sydney than in coastal Sydney. These hotter summers are also getting longer.

As a spring heatwave breaks temperature records, experts say urban design will play a vital role as extreme heat becomes more frequent and severe. Why are temperatures so different between western and eastern Sydney?