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Essay engineering challenges

The urban heat island is generated by external factors that human cause it, as gas emissions
from vehicles even air conditioning units because the latter requires a lot of energy
consumption to work, also for heat shedding from all that concrete and brick soaks up the
sun’s rays at night, all of these causing that temperature rise of up to 20 degrees Fahrenheit,
in which a lot of people died for effects of climate changes that little by little destroy our
world.

The purpose of the essay is to raise awareness about generation of heat waves and how to
prevent them through solutions implemented by scientists and engineers to reflect the sun
such as materials for colder ceilings and heat-reflecting pigments, fresh pavements, green
roofs and green spaces in the neighborhood.

The Urban Heat Island

Los Angeles: Cool Roofs And Fitting The Solution To Landscapes

This city is one of many others that begin to give way to the implementation of solutions,
using residential buildings to have high-reflectivity roofs, also pouring cool pavements to
test their effectiveness in lowering temperatures. USC scientist George Ban-Weiss mentions
the use of trees instead of painting white floors or ceilings, good idea for the simple fact that
the trees, in addition to providing shade and reflecting the sun's rays, provide fresh air to the
neighborhoods and cities.

New York City: Green Roofs And Community Activists

Being a city that has very few green spaces, it makes it more vulnerable and by 2080 many
people will have died. Therefore, Annel Hernández, of the Environmental Justice Alliance
of the City of New York, intends to contribute with ideas to mitigate the effects of urban heat
island, taking into account that more than half of the residents of public housing in the city
live in their neighborhoods most vulnerable to heat.
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Phoenix: The Hottest City In The U.S. Is Trying Everything

Due to high temperatures in summer (more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit), this city is very
concerned about resolving heat waves. Therefore, since 2006 they have been painting the
roofs of white municipal buildings, as well as planting more trees and investing more to
soften this effect.

How You Are Responding To Urban Heat Islands

The climate scientist at the Virginia Museum of Science Museum, faced with the concern
of improving the health of planet earth, developed a method to map urban heat islands,
recording data in the same city, time and day in different sectors, obtaining an average
difference 15 degrees between the warmest and coolest points.

Under Climate Change, The AC Giveth And The AC Taketh Away

The use of air conditioning can be very helpful in preventing deaths from heat exhaustion.
However, increased air conditioning use increases emissions of air pollutants from power
plants, in turn worsening air quality and human health impacts.

To carry out this problem, a system of interdisciplinary model was used to calculate air
pollution and the impacts on the health of a warmer climate with and without greater use of
air conditioning and subsequent increases in harmful emissions of the hydroelectric power.
They found that concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) and ozone (O3) increase
in a warmer climate and that 3.8% of the total increase in PM 2.5 and 6.7% of the total
increase in ozone (O3) are attributable to extra air conditioning use. Increased air
conditioning, specifically, accounts for 654 future summer PM 2.5 -related deaths
(approximately $6 billion cost—based on a value of statistical life calculated from 26
studies—and a 4.8% increase above climate change impacts alone) and 315 O3 -related
deaths (approximately $3 billion cost and an 8.7% increase above climate change impacts
alone).

Additionally, using queries from external sources such as YouTube, is mentioned the
publication of the magazine post - medicine mentions that one of the main sources of
electricity is through the use of fossil fuels used in industries.
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How this problem relates to mechanical engineering.

This problem is related to the mechanical engineering through the first law of
thermodynamics, in which energy is not created or destroyed, just transforms. In order to
fund this concept is necessary to be based on one of the important branches of mechanical
engineering, such as are the case of fluid mechanics and heat transfer, where concepts of
continuity, preservation of the moment, apply gradients speed and temperature due to viscous
forces, as well as the transfer of heat by conduction, free convection and radiation, where
these terms are applied in daily living, generated when there is a temperature difference that
seeks to reach a equilibrium temperature.

In the case of conduction, proposes the analysis of a building, where hot days to opt for
the use of air conditioners and the internal environment to be at a temperature different from
the external environment, there will be a transfer of heat through the walls of the building.
Also, with the case of convection and emphasizing the convection free (since the free
draughts on the building are not generated by an external agent such as pumps or turbines)
to nightfall the building absorbed heat during the exposure of sun rays during the day,
exchanges heat with the cold of the night atmosphere, in where the layers of air stream
adjacent to the surface of the body exchange energy and do vary the density of the air, which,
cold to be lighter air tends to fall, result the same case but man It was the reverse for hot air,
producing thus a cycle to the extent of the equilibrium temperature. Finally, the radiation is
absorbed through black bodies and reflected with white bodies, reason why the imminent
situation which is going through our planet, many cities in the United States are preparing to
reflect the rays from the Sun to prevent deaths by excessive heat gain.

Is this problem relevant in Ecuador? Justify.

Yes, because that involves many factors starting from the policy to the awareness by
Parties of us, put that in the current Presidency is seek to cut trees in the Ecuadorian Amazon
in order to obtain petroleum, but, when this Act are attacking the lungs of the world, there
are no trees there will be no fresh air. From another point of view, the greenhouse gases that
are produced by the industries for the generation of raw material, as well as for the CO2
emissions of vehicles, situation that is difficult to change for the simple fact that we don't
have the same economy of the first world countries, who are in the process of car use power
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from renewable and clean energy. Finally, if we rely on statistical data provided by the INEC
(National Institute of Statistics and Censuse) emphasizes that the Ecuador with the passing
of the years its temperature increases and the effects of global warming also, reason for which
would be of great importance instill the country about the serious problem that we are
causing.

Conclusions

Heat waves as the effects intangible and not taken seriously by human beings, generates
a great involvement of health to the world, leading to its decline with the passing of the years,
as well as also producing deaths.

Heat waves have great weight due to damage of the ozone layer, where the Sun's rays
enter with greater force and their wavelengths of the visible spectrum, which are infrared,
will generate heat to the body that influence, altering, spending the properties of the materials
causing very serious damage and losses.

Importantly, the use of roofs, and greenspace for the protection of the rays of the Sun, as
well as also the use of cold floors and ceilings of buildings in white so that they can reflect
the Sun's rays.

Knowing now that the generation of heat waves goes hand in hand with the increase of
temperature and excessive use of the air conditioning, electricity companies contribute with
the air pollution due to the use of fossil fuels for the generation of energy from AC grounding.

Currently, what is happening to the Amazon region of Brazil and, relating it to the present
subject, it is estimated that the urban heat island will increase by the simple fact that will not
be counted with more clean air, shadows that provided us the trees for the care of the soil and
health of the world.

Bibliography

[1] Science Friday. (2019). No Title. Retrieved from Hot Enough For You? Cooling The
Worsening Urban Heat Island website: https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/hot-
enough-for-you-cooling-the-worsening-urban-heat-island/

[2] Science Friday. (2018). No Title. Retrieved from Under Climate Change, The AC
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Giveth And The AC Taketh Away website:

https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/under-climate-change-the-ac-giveth-and-the-
ac-taketh-away/