On the Urban Heat Island in Beirut

The urban heat island (UHI) is one of the more commonly documented phenomena of climate change. It is related to higher urban temperatures in the city centers as compared to the surrounding rural or suburban areas and can lead to unpleasant effects on urban dwellers not least of all on air quality, energy consumption levels, human health, and even mortality rates. In Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon, the literature clearly points to a lack of research on this topic. In addition, there is no evidence that there is a systematic transfer of urban climatic knowledge between concerned stakeholders like urban planning and environmental authorities which is cause for concern given the ever-increasing worldwide attention being given to climate change adaptation and mitigation measures and sustainable city developments. The objective of this research is to therefore investigate the intensity of UHI in Beirut, to identify most suitable measures to alleviate the effects of UHI from a technical perspective, to assess the implications on urban planning processes and to accordingly find opportunities for planning and design practices in Beirut. Beirut is a coastal city that sits on a peninsula that extends westward into the Mediterranean Sea. It covers a surface area of about 20 square kilometers, has a population of approximately 500,000 inhabitants, with a very high population density of about 21,000 inhabitants / km2.The UHI in Beirut was investigated using the Town Energy Balance (TEB) urban surface exchange modeling scheme developed by Meteo France (Masson, 2000). TEB is included in the SURFEX land-surface modeling system. SURFEX means “surface externalisee” and it is a code that represents the energy exchange processes that occur between the atmosphere and the urban surfaces. Simulations were accordingly run across Beirut using TEB for 1 day during the winter season on 1 January, from 00:00 UTC (equivalent to 2:00AM local standard time) to 23:00 UTC, and 1 day during the summer season on 1 July from 00:00 UTC to 23:00 UTC with one hour time steps or one hour output results. During the summer significant variations of up to 6oC were found for canyon temperatures whereas areas characterized by dense urban fabrics had higher temperatures typically due to the larger fraction of man-made as opposed to natural surfaces and due to the lower albedo values (generally 0.2). During the winter, temperature variations were not as significant, differing by up to 1oC between aforementioned areas across Beirut. Therefore areas with high garden fractions were found to play an important cooling effect in the simulations for Beirut. In addition, a significant variation in cooling energy usage was found during the summer across Beirut where simulations showed energy demands as low as 50 W/m2 in areas characterized by higher garden fractions whereas simulations were much higher, up to 800 W/m2, in areas with dense urban fabrics. In the summer heating energy demands were also significant ranging from as low as 20-300 W/m2 across Beirut. Six scenarios were also run on TEB which showed that increasing the albedo of roofs and the fraction of gardens had the most noteworthy cooling effects. This research found that there are opportunities for improvement of the Urban Planning Law and the Building Code of Lebanon for better consideration of the urban microclimatic issues and recommended emphasis on urban greening strategies and cool roofing strategies. this thesis contributed to a better understanding of the urban environment of the city of Beirut and the respective urban parameters that have the most significant impact on reducing some of the impacts of the urban heat island phenomenon. In doing so, this research has paved the way for further work on reducing the UHI effect in Beirut, with the ultimate aim of creating a comfortable and safe environment for its residents, and future generations