The Potential Impacts of COVID-19 on the Urban Cooling Effect in New York City
By Ben Becker
This summer, I conducted research focused on the potential impacts of COVID-19 on the urban cooling effect in NYC. Most see COVID merely as a life threatening worldwide pandemic, and while it is an infectious disease, I was curious to see whether or not COVID was beneficial for the environment. Automobiles like cars, buses, and planes release greenhouse gases (CO, CO2 and NOx) into the atmosphere which negatively impact the environment of NYC. Surfaces like asphalt and concrete have a very high heat retention, and absorb heat from the sun. Shortly after these surfaces absorb heat, it is reflected back into the atmosphere, and trapped by greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide which ultimately makes the temperature of NYC much warmer.
I was interested in researching strategies to reduce this impact on urban systems, especially in densely populated areas like NYC. One way to potentially address this is the urban cooling effect, which is a process of using urban green space to cool the surrounding area. The temperature gap between an area filled with office buildings, cars, and busy roads (NYC/LGA) and an area densely filled with trees and vegetation (Central Park) for instance is one way of measuring some of the impacts of this urban cooling effect. In my research study I selected two locations (LGA and Central Park) and observed COVID’s impact on temperature and air quality since the pandemic has put a halt to air and road travel (meaning there should be a reduction in greenhouse gases during this “shelter-in-place” time period). My initial hypothesis was that the urban cooling effect in New York City would appear to be less prevalent during this quarantine period (data collected from April 12th-May 11th 2020) compared to the same 30 day time period in 2019 because of the absence of greenhouse gases. I predicted that the temperature gap between LaGuardia Airport and Central Park would be much less during this stay-in-place period mainly because of the lack of greenhouse gas emissions released by automobiles. I chose to conduct this study because COVID’s impact on mankind has been very negative, however looking at this pandemic from a different perspective (environmentally) could help us understand the beneficial outcomes fossil fuel reduction could lead us to.
In order to conduct this research, I gathered information from a variety of databases and websites which included statistics on temperature in the past year. However, for this study statistics on Manhattan city’s blocks were difficult to access, so I used LGA (LaGuardia Airport) as a point of reference to compare the temperatures in Central Park to. In reviewing my data sources, a crowded city block would have been a better, more accurate reference point than LaGuardia Airport for a few reasons: First, cars and buses account for nearly 29% of CO2 emissions, while planes only account for about 2–3% of general air pollution. Nearly 72% of the city is made up of asphalt and concrete, meaning the majority of NYC has a very high heat retention. Since there were much fewer cars on the street during this stay-in-place time period (traffic volume decreased by 43%), there would be a lack of greenhouse gases to trap the heat released by these surfaces, meaning the decrease in temperature would be all the more cool. In addition, LaGuardia Airport is right on the Hudson River, meaning it receives a sea breeze. This gust of wind could have potentially interfered with the temperatures measured. On the other hand, Manhattan receives no sea breeze as it is surrounded by tall office buildings and automobiles.
With all of this in mind, an average city block in Manhattan would have been more ideal for the research I conducted because it would represent the impact that COVID has had on the urban cooling effect much more accurately. However, by analyzing the data which consisted of recorded temperatures at LaGuardia Airport and Central Park, I was able to see the effect COVID-19 has had on New York City’s environment and air quality. It became apparent that the temperature decrease at Central Park was much greater than the temperature decrease at LGA over the past year, meaning that the impact of the reduction of flights on average LGA temperatures, while not insubstantial, was much less than the impact of less NYC car or bus traffic on average Central Park temperatures. After analyzing the data and making several calculations, graphs, and tables, I had a chance to reflect here on the impact COVID has had on the urban cooling effect and air quality in NYC, and what I took away from the project.
A few things I took away from this project are: Cars, buses, planes, and other automobiles account for 28.2% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States .air pollution and the health of the environment. They produce greenhouse gases that negatively impact the air quality and also increase the temperature in areas where they are released since they trap heat. NYC is already seeing an increase in greenhouse gas emissions since the city has started to reopen, but it’s important to note the health of the city with a reduction in road and air travel for future reference. A recently conducted Harvard Study found that somebody living in a country with higher levels of pollution is 8% more likely to die from COVID-19. If NYC can find a way to reduce road travel, long commutes, and other means of transportation that cause traffic on the roads, NYC’s environment could become much healthier. I connected with Dr. Xinrong Ren, an NOAA affiliate and graduate of Maryland University (Department of Atmos. & Oceanic Sci.) with a Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences, for some guidance on my study. He explained:
“The change in behaviors related to COVID is more temporary, however it’s a good opportunity to test our hypotheses and air quality models for emissions and pollutants…..We can use this as an environmental model in the future to predict climate change…Many people and companies will continue to try and reduce traffic and emissions such as reducing the trip on the road. In the future if we have electric cars this will improve the environment. During COVID, we saw a 40–50% dropoff in traffic, [so] if 40–50% of cars are electric we will see a similar change in emissions.”
Dr. Ren was able to mentor me throughout this project and provide advice for my research methods. I discovered Dr. Ren through The New York Times. The newspaper published an experiment that Ren and a few other scientists conducted regarding an idea similar to mine: Comparing the pandemic’s cleaner air to pre-COVID numbers and possibly reshaping what we know about the atmosphere. Ren offered interesting ideas, and provided guidance in order to make my project as accurate as possible. In addition to Dr. Ren’s help, Dr. Christopher Kennedy and Dr. Timon McPhearson from the Urban System Labs provided guidance on this project as well. If I were to reshape my project, I would change a few things. A future direction I would definitely take, would be to establish a full team for this project. If there was a full team on this project, I would have been able to collect data in a much more efficient, precise way. If there were many people on this team, we would be able to personally collect temperatures from anywhere we wanted, and this would reduce the amount of human error as well. In other words, having many people work on this research project would allow us to collect temperatures from an actual city block in Manhattan, and this would also prevent digging on the internet for viable data. If we had our own data, it would make the study all the more accurate. However, for this research project having a full team assigned to work on this topic was unavailable, so I collected the most accurate data I could find and had a chance to reflect here on the potential impacts COVID has had on NYC’s urban cooling effect.
If you’re interested in viewing the results and reading the more on my project, visit this link.
Ben Becker is a rising junior at Horace Mann School in the Bronx, NY. He lives in Manhattan, NY. If you are interested in getting in touch or have any questions regarding my research you can contact me here.
