Reflective Roofs & Pavements Aid Climate Change Action-

According to a recently published paper in Environmental Research Letters, intensifying reflectivity – or “albedo” – on rooftops and pavements in metropolitan areas could substantially offset greenhouse gas emissions. The study, performed by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, illustrates how a 25 percent and 15 percent boost in the albedos of rooftops and pavements could offset roughly 57 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. “Increasing urban albedo is something that should be done now to buy time for implementing other near-term and long-term climate mitigation strategies,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development. Exteriors with high albedo mirror more solar radiation, preventing rays from heating the surface and atmosphere; accordingly, establishing “cool roofs” and more reflective paving materials could reinstate a portion of the albedo that has vanished through the melting of Arctic sea ice. “Although it does not solve the root of the climate change problem – substantial reductions in CO2 and other climate forcers are essential for that – urban albedo can delay the onset of more severe climate impacts, and reduce the risk of passing the thresholds for abrupt and irreversible climate changes,” Zaelke adds. Due to the ever-increasing quantity of CO2 and other dangerous greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, there is a critical necessity for rapid climate action to impede rising levels of harmful pollution and the coup de grâce that follows sudden climate change. Besides developing and amplifying urban albedo, other tactics involve reducing emissions of black carbon soot, tropospheric ozone, and methane; in addition to utilizing the Montreal Protocol ozone treaty to phase down hydrofluorocarbons – which could prevent more than 100 billion tones of CO2-equivalent emissions by 2050.