A video has revealed the immense difference trees can make in keeping a neighborhood cool.
What are urban trees?
Urban trees are any trees that grow in an urban area. In cities with hot summers and overwhelming sunshine, these trees can make a massive impact on everyday life by providing shade for buildings, pedestrians, cars, and other plants.
Why are urban trees important?
A video posted to the LinkedIn page of green search engine Ecosia shows how trees in urban spaces can drastically reduce the temperature of a city.
In the video, we see two streets — one without trees and one with an abundance of them. The unshaded street shows temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) on the street and 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 Fahrenheit) in the air, and the shaded street shows 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 Fahrenheit) on the street and 34 degrees Celsius (93.2 Fahrenheit) in the air. There's an entire world of difference between those two ranges.
The caption of an Instagram version of the post claims that areas of cities covered in trees can see land cool by 12 degrees Celsius (21.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and air cool by 8 degrees Celsius (14.4 degrees Fahrenheit) with the help of trees. They do this by providing shade and supplying extra moisture into the air.
As the world experiences record-breaking temperatures this summer, it's clear that cooling our communities is as important as ever. Ecosia, the company that posted the video above, is a search engine and plug-in dedicated to planting trees around the world — to date, it is responsible for more than 180 million new trees, according to the company's website.
The company uses 100% of its profits for climate action, supporting projects that plant more than 500 populations of native species across more than 35 different countries, according to the company's website.
A post on the company's blog outlines how rising temperatures aren't just a scientific concern, but a human health one.
"It's not just about temperatures. It's also a matter of climate justice," the post reads. "Lower income and Black, Asian and other ethnic minority communities are most likely to experience the impacts of climate change, overheating and air pollution, and lack of access to green spaces. When temperatures soar to [104 degrees Fahrenheit] as they did in London yesterday, a lack of greenery and trees becomes a public health issue."
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