Climate- and environment-conscious urban growth in the Guangdong-Hong Kong- Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA): solutions and co-benefits
Project Description
Global warming caused by human activities has invoked more intense and frequent extreme weather events around the world, and urbanisation plays a non-negligible role. Urban growth has been taking place at an unprecedented pace and it is anticipated to continue in the future. Urbanisation induces not only convenience of living and better access to healthcare, but it also creates a series of social and environmental issues. How we act to alleviate the adverse effects of urbanisation remains a challenging issue, which requires knowledge in multiple disciplines, including urban planning, atmospheric science, environmental engineering, etc. Different spatial arrangements and distribution of urban lands are likely to significantly affect the magnitude of urban warming, diffusion of air pollutants, and human exposure to these risk factors. It has been demonstrated previously that compact and sprawling urban growth is prone to trigger intensified urban warming and exert greater human heat stress. The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA) was proposed in recent years as a key strategic planning in China’s development blueprint, and the planning and development of the GBA is still in the early stages. Careful and thoughtful planning of urban lands would benefit urban climate, environment and human health, without sacrificing the goal of urban growth and economic development. Besides, how to better assess the impacts of the planning of lands on climate, environment and human health remains a concerned issue, as China plans to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality.
To address these essential issues, this project aims to offer solutions to climate- and environment-conscious urban growth and to assess the co-benefits of climate, air quality and human health. This will be achieved with a team composed of members who have expertise in urban planning, climate science, atmospheric chemistry, and environmental health. In this project, we will develop a tool to optimise arrangements of lands to reduce urban warming, air pollution, and human exposure. A coupled climate-chemistry model will be improved with better secondary formation of pollution from urban sources. This modeling tool will further be used to assess how the optimised land arrangements would benefit urban warming and air pollution. The co-benefits of human health will also be assessed with cohort data. The results would offer valuable implications for the development of the GBA and contribute to the achievement of carbon peak and carbon neutrality.
Project Investigator
Professor GAO Meng (Academy of Geography, Sociology and International Studies)
Project Collaborators
- University of Hong Kong
- The Chinese University of Hong Kong
- Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Publications
- Wang, F., Xu, Y., Patel, P. N., Gautam, R., Gao, M., Liu, C., ... & McElroy, M. B. (2024). Arctic amplification–induced decline in West and South Asia dust warrants stronger antidesertification toward carbon neutrality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(14), e2317444121. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2317444121
- Wang, F., Gao, M., Liu, C., Zhao, R., & McElroy, M. B. (2024). Uniformly elevated future heat stress in China driven by spatially heterogeneous water vapor changes. Nature Communications, 15(1), 4522. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48895-w
- Wang, F., Lu, Z., Lin, G., Carmichael, G. R., & Gao, M. (2024). Brown Carbon in East Asia: Seasonality, Sources, and Influences on Regional Climate and Air Quality. ACS Environmental Au. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsenvironau.4c00
- Wang, S., Gao , M., Xiao, X., Jiang, X., & Luo, J. (2024). Wasted efforts of elite Marathon runners under a warming climate primarily due to atmospheric oxygen reduction. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 7(1), 97. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-024-00637-x
- Xiao, X., Liu, R., Zhang, Z., Jalaludin, B., Heinrich, J., Lao, X., ... & Yin, C. (2024). Using individual approach to examine the association between urban heat island and preterm birth: A nationwide cohort study in China. Environment International, 183, 108356. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202300629
