Golf courses may cool the desert.Golf courses may cool the desert Scientists and urbanites are quite familiar with the "heat island" effect, which makes cities warmer than surrounding lawn-marbled suburbs. Now on the flip side Flip side In the context of general equities, opposite side to a proposition or position (buy, if sell is the proposition and vice versa). , climate researchers think they have identified a desert locale (programming) locale - A geopolitical place or area, especially in the context of configuring an operating system or application program with its character sets, date and time formats, currency formats etc. Locales are significant for internationalisation and localisation. where urban development has helped cool a city -- what they term a "cool island" effect. Since the early 1970s, Palm Springs, Calif., has cooled off several degrees relative to nearby towns such as Redlands, apparently because golf course construction has turned the town into a veritable oasis oasis (ōā`sĭs), an area within a desert where the water table reaches the surface, with enough moisture to permit the growth of vegetation. The water may come up to the surface in springs, or it may collect in mountain hollows. , report Robert Balling Robert C. Balling, Jr. is the former director of the Office of Climatology and is a professor of geography at Arizona State University. He received his Ph.D. in geography from the University of Oklahoma in 1979. Balling is a declared "global warming skeptic. and Nina Lolk from Arizona State University Arizona State University, at Tempe; coeducational; opened 1886 as a normal school, became 1925 Tempe State Teachers College, renamed 1945 Arizona State College at Tempe. Its present name was adopted in 1958. in Tempe. Golf courses and other vegetated urban plots such as cemeteries and parks are known to keep city temperatures lower through evaporation evaporation, change of a liquid into vapor at any temperature below its boiling point. For example, water, when placed in a shallow open container exposed to air, gradually disappears, evaporating at a rate that depends on the amount of surface exposed, the humidity . When radiation from the sun hits a street or building, most of the incoming energy is transformed into heat. However, if the rays strike an irrigated area, part of the energy evaporates water from plants and soil, leaving less energy to create heat, says Balling. Although many possible reasons could explain why Palm Springs is growing cooler than its neighbors, Balling says the most reasonable explanation is the growing area of turf within the city. At least two-thirds of the approximately 75 golf courses in town were constructed within the 15 years, which is when the cooling trend began, he says. Microclimatic studies on golf courses in Phoenix have verified this effect on a small scale. "When you walk out on a golf course, you can go from an environment that is 108[deg.] F or 110[deg.] F, and if you take air temperatures right over the golf course on a calm day, it's often as much as 8 or 9 degrees colder than surrounding areas that are not irrigated," says Balling, who has spent several years studying how expanding desert cities such as Phoenix and Tucson are warming with respect to the surrounding deserts. |
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