Building and Environment 217 (2022) 109082

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Building and Environment

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/buildenv

The effectiveness of cool and green roofs in mitigating urban heat island
and improving human thermal comfort
Xun Wang a, 1, Huidong Li a, b, *, Sahar Sodoudi a
a
Institute of Meteorology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
b
CAS Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Urban residents suffer more from heat stress, compared to people living in rural areas, due to the urban heat
Cool roof island (UHI) effect. Mitigation of UHI is thus essential to improving human thermal comfort and living envi­
Green roof ronment in urban residential areas. However, little attention has been paid to the integrated effect of UHI
Urban heat island
mitigation strategies on human thermal comfort, which is influenced by the combination of temperature, hu­
Human thermal comfort
UTCI
midity, wind, and radiation. This study evaluates the effectiveness of two promising UHI mitigation strategies,
WRF/UCM cool and green roofs, in improving human thermal comfort during a heatwave in Berlin. Human thermal comfort
is represented by the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI), calculated by combining the Weather Research
and Forecasting model coupled with the Urban Canopy Model (WRF/UCM) with the RayMan model. The results
show that cool roofs outperform green roofs in reducing urban temperatures, especially at night. Besides tem­
perature reduction, both strategies show lower wind speed, lower mean radiant temperature, and higher relative
humidity. These combined effects lead to a city-scale decrease in UTCI. Cool roofs reduce more UTCI than green
roofs, although they both shorten the duration of strong heat stress from 7 h d− 1 to 5 h d− 1. A higher albedo and
irrigation can strengthen the cooling effect of cool and green roofs, respectively. Our study can deepen the
understanding of the mechanism of natural infrastructure in improving human thermal comfort, providing sci­
entific guidance for future city management.

1. Introduction
Climate change has increased the strength and frequency of extreme
heat events, deteriorateing human thermal comfort and thus threatening
human health. Increased mortality rates caused by heat stress have been
reported in many previous studies (e.g., [1–3]. Especially, in urban
areas, residents suffer from more heat stress and have higher mortality
due to the additional heat load caused by Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect
[4,79]. Although urban areas only cover 0.5% of the earth’s surface [5],
more than one-half of the world’s population lives in cities. Moreover,
this proportion is projected to rise to 66% by 2050 [67], meaning the
majority of people will be directly exposed to high heat risk. Therefore,
it is imperative to mitigate UHI and create a better thermal environment
in urban areas.
The change of surface energy balance caused by urbanization is the
main cause of UHI [6,7]. Urban impervious surface has lower albedo,
but higher Bowen ratio and heat capacity, compared to the natural
surface. As a result, urban areas have higher absorption of solar radia­
tion, excessive energy allocation to sensible heat during the day, and
larger release of heat stored in buildings at night, driving the formation
of UHI [8–10]. The release of anthropogenic heat also increases the total
sensible heat flux in urban areas, further enhancing UHI [11]. Based on
the mechanism of UHI formation, mitigation strategies are designed
according to their influence on surface energy balance, such as
increasing surface albedo, decreasing Bowen ratio and heat capacity [8,
11].
Cool and green roofs are two widely used measurements for UHI
mitigation in practice (e.g., [12–14,53]). Both strategies aim to reduce
the sensible heat flux by affecting surface energy balance, which is given
by: Rn = SH + LH + G where Rn , SH, LH, and G stand for net all-wave
radiation, sensible heat flux, latent heat flux, and ground heat flux. A
cool roof with high albedo reduces the net radiation by reflecting more
incoming solar radiation and thus reducing the sensible heat flux and
absorbed heat on the surface. Whereas with vegetation on the rooftop, a

* Corresponding author. Institute of Meteorology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

E-mail address: huidong.li@met.fu-berlin.de (H. Li).
1
Now at: Chair of Climatology, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2022.109082
Received 13 January 2022; Received in revised form 23 March 2022; Accepted 7 April 2022
Available online 15 April 2022
0360-1323/© 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
X. Wang et al. Building and Environment 217 (2022) 109082

Fig. 1. Locations of WRF domains and land cover map. (a) Three nested domains; (b) the innermost domain with the black line representing the border of Berlin and
white points representing the observation stations. Background contour shows land use modified from CORINE Land Cover version 2012 with a spatial resolution of
100 m.

green roof increases evapotranspiration and thus reduces the allocation

Table 1
of net all-wave radiation into sensible heat flux [15,16]. Both roofs have
Urban morphology for three urban land use classes for Berlin adopted from [6].
high feasibility and have been widely recommended by professional
Unit Low intensity High Industrial and agencies, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (https
residential intensity commercial
://www.epa.gov/heatislands/heat-island-cooling-strategies). In prac­
residential
tice, many cities around the world have already implemented these two
Roof level (h) m 10.45 17.90 10.92 strategies, such as Beijing (Beijing Rooftop Landscaping Association,
Roof width (R) m 16.66 22.86 48.23
Road width (Rd ) m 13.52 16.85 16.28
http://www.greenroof.org.cn/roof/), New York (NYC◦ Cool Roofs, http:
Roof coverage ratio – 0.55 0.58 0.75 //www.nyc.gov/html/coolroofs/), and various cities in European
of the impervious countries (European Federation of Green Roof and Wall Associations,
part (Aroof imp ) http://efb-greenroof.eu/).
Urban fraction (Furb ) 0.47 0.88 0.78
–
Cool and green roofs have great potential to mitigate UHI because of
the high percentage of roof cover in urban areas. The effectiveness of
these two strategies in mitigating UHI has been confirmed by several
Table 2 previous studies based on observation and modeling (e.g., [15–19].
Information of measurement stations. Ta and RH stand for air temperature and However, these studies mainly focused on the temperature-reducing
relative humidity at 2 m. U is the wind speed at 10 m. effect of these two strategies but did not consider the integrated effect
Station Name Longitude Latitude Variables Sourcea on human thermal comfort. Urban climate influences human thermal
Buch 13.5020 52.6310 Ta, RH DWD comfort by the combined effect of temperature, humidity, wind speed,
Dahlem 13.3017 52.4537 Ta, RH DWD and radiation. Heat stress, resulting from increased body core temper­
Kaniswall 13.7310 52.4040 Ta, RH DWD ature when metabolic heat cannot be properly dissipated [20], can lead
Lindenberg 14.1180 52.2085 Ta, RH DWD
to adverse effects, such as increased mortality rates (e.g., [20–22]. It was
Marzahn 13.5600 52.5450 Ta, RH DWD
Schoenefeld 13.5306 52.3807 Ta, RH, U DWD
found that, besides reduced air temperature, cool and green roofs can
Tegel 13.3088 52.5644 Ta, RH, U DWD also reduce wind speed [16], hindering the cooling effect of wind.
Tempelhof 13.4021 52.4675 Ta, RH, U DWD Therefore, the design of UHI mitigation strategies should consider the
Fasanenstrasse 13.3240 52.5090 Ta, RH FUB combined effect of all meteorological variables that affect human ther­
a
DWD = Deutscher Wetterdienst, German Weather Service, www.dwd.de; mal comfort.
FUB=Freie Universität Berlin, http://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/en/met/service/st To bridge this gap, we evaluated the effectiveness of cool and green
adtmessnetz/index.html. roofs in improving human thermal comfort over the city of Berlin by
using the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with the
Urban Canopy Model (WRF/UCM) and the RayMan model. Five sce­
Table 3 narios were designed to represent different roof types and the two
Design of scenarios representing different roof types. strategies were compared in terms of their reduction of urban temper­
Scenarios Roof Albedo Green Roof Irrigation ature and their impact on human thermal comfort. Furthermore, the
Ref 0.163 off off physical mechanism behind the changes in urban temperature and
CR0.5 0.500 off off human thermal comfort was examined. Our study can help to guide the
CR0.85 0.850 off off planning and management of roofs to achieve a better living environ­
GR 0.163 on off
ment in urban areas.
GR_ir 0.163 on on

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X. Wang et al. Building and Environment 217 (2022) 109082

Fig. 2. Comparison of hourly values of (a) 2 m air temperature, (b) 2 m relative humidity, and (c) 10 m wind speed between WRF simulation (reference scenario) and
observations from 18–19 July 2014. The values for air temperature and relative humidity are averaged over all nine stations, while the values for wind speed are
averaged for three stations with wind speed data as shown in Table 2.

strong UHI [1].

Table 4
Difference of simulated meteorological variables and UTCI between mitigation
scenarios and the reference scenario. Values are averaged over all grid points, 2.2. WRF/UCM
urban grid points, and non-urban grid points inside Berlin. Daytime values are
averaged over the period between 04:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC; nighttime values 2.2.1. Model description
are averaged over the period between 20:00 UTC to 03:00 UTC. A non-hydrostatic, compressible, mesoscale model WRF version 3.8
Variables Time CR0.85-Ref GR_ir-Ref [30,31] was employed in this study. To have a better description of the
urban surface processes, WRF was coupled with the single-layer urban
All Urban Non- All Urban Non-
urban urban
canopy model (UCM, [32]). UCM is embedded within the first model
layer and considers detailed canopy processes, including the shadowing,
Day − 3.10 − 4.35 − 0.94 − 2.76 − 3.88 − 0.85
reflections, and trapping of radiation, surface energy budget of roofs,
ΔLST
Night − 0.63 − 0.78 − 0.36 − 0.11 − 0.10 − 0.13
ΔTa (K) Day − 0.80 − 0.89 − 0.67 − 0.65 − 0.71 − 0.57 walls, and roads, and anthropogenic heat emissions ([32]). WRF/UCM
Night − 0.52 − 0.55 − 0.46 − 0.26 − 0.23 − 0.31 has been widely used in the simulation of UHI and its mitigation stra­
ΔRH (%) Day 3.40 3.82 2.66 3.79 4.35 2.83 tegies (e.g., [6,15]).
Night 2.28 2.42 2.04 1.78 1.73 1.85 In UCM, urban land use is categorized into three classes: low in­
ΔU (m Day − 0.18 − 0.28 − 0.00 − 0.20 − 0.28 − 0.05
s¡1) Night − 0.12 − 0.16 − 0.06 − 0.12 − 0.14 − 0.08
tensity residential area, high intensity residential area, as well as in­
ΔTmrt (K) Day − 1.30 − 1.75 − 0.51 − 1.29 − 1.75 − 0.49 dustrial and commercial area. A grid cell with a dominant land use class
Night − 0.55 − 0.64 − 0.39 − 0.16 − 0.14 − 0.19 of one of the above-mentioned three urban classes is defined as an urban
ΔUTCI Day − 0.60 − 0.65 − 0.53 − 0.44 − 0.48 − 0.38 grid cell. An urban grid cell is further partitioned into an impervious part
(K) Night − 0.36 − 0.37 − 0.34 − 0.04 0.02 − 0.13
and a vegetation part. The ratio of the impervious part, also called urban
fraction, as well as other urban morphological parameters, can be
2. Methodology defined by users for each of the three urban land use classes.

2.1. Study area 2.2.2. Model configuration

The study area is Berlin (52.34◦ -52.68◦ N, 13.10◦ -13.77◦ E) (Fig. 1),
which is the largest city in Germany with an area of 891.7 km2 and a
population of around 3,600,000 (Statistic Office of Berlin-Brandenburg,
https://www.statistik-berlin-brandenburg.de). Berlin has a built-up
area of 35% and transportation and infrastructure coverage of 20%
[23]. Pronounced UHI effect has already been reported in Berlin from
previous studies based on in-situ observations [24,25], remote sensing
[26], and numerical modeling [6,27–29,57]). Heat stress occurred on
34% of summer days in Berlin ([70]) and the mortality rate during heat
waves was found to be the highest in the densely built-up area with
Three two-way nested domains with the innermost centered in Berlin
were designed (Fig. 1a). The spatial resolutions (number of grid points)
of these three domains are 15 km (119 × 119), 3 km (155 × 155), and 1
km (111 × 111), respectively. In the vertical direction, we applied 33
terrain-following eta-levels with the top level at 50 hPa and the lowest
level at ~35 m. The physical parameterization schemes used in this
study are as follows: WRF Single-Moment 3-class scheme for Micro­
physics [75]; RRTM scheme for long-wave radiation [73] and Goddard
shortwave scheme for short-wave radiation [74]; MM5 Monin-Obukhov
scheme for surface clay physics [76] and BouLac scheme for planetary
boundary layer physics [77]; the Noah-LSM for natural land surface
processes [33] and UCM [32] for urban surface processes.

3
X. Wang et al.
Fig. 3. Comparison of the cooling effects in terms of urban (a) land surface temperature and (b) air temperature at 2 m. Each curve represents the difference between
the corresponding scenario and the reference scenario. All values are averaged over urban grid cells in Berlin and averaged over 18–19 July 2014.
Fig. 4. Influence of cool roofs and green roofs on land surface temperature over
different urban land use classes. All values are averaged over 18–19 July 2014.
(For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is
referred to the Web version of this article.)
The urban morphological details for the three urban land use classes
in UCM have been calculated specifically for Berlin [6] and are listed in
Table 1. In addition, to account for the sub-grid variability of land use,
we applied the mosaic approach from [34]. By default, WRF only con­
siders the dominant land use class for a grid cell. Here, we used the
mosaic approach with four tiles to include the four most frequent land
use classes within a grid cell. The final surface variables for a grid cell are
area-averaged variables from these four tiles. Due to the mosaic
approach, the roof coverage ratio varies for the same urban land use
class. The roof coverage ratio (Aroof ) of an urban grid cell is calculated as:
Aroof = Aroof imp • Furb • Flu
Aroof =
R and air temperature.
imp
R + Rd
where Aroof imp and Furb are the roof coverage ratio of the impervious part
and urban fraction as listed in Table 1. Aroof imp is calculated from roof
width (R) and road width (Rd ). Flu is the fraction of the dominant urban
land use class from the mosaic approach. The mean value (standard
deviation) of roof coverage ratio for low intensity residential area, high
intensity residential area, and industrial and commercial area are 0.19
(0.05), 0.30 (0.05), and 0.36 (0.10), respectively.
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Building and Environment 217 (2022) 109082
2.2.3. Initial and lateral boundary conditions
The initial and boundary conditions to drive the model are the
analysis data from Global Forecast System with a spatial resolution of
0.5◦ and a temporal resolution of 6 h. The land cover data is from
CORINE Land Cover (CLC) version 2012 with a spatial resolution of 100
m. The original CLC data has 44 land use classes, while WRF/UCM only
recognizes 33 land use categories. To match the USGS land use classi­
fication used in the WRF/UCM, the CORINE Land Cover data was
reclassified referring to the studies of [35,61].
2.2.4. Simulation period and model evaluation
The simulation period is from 17 to 19 July 2014 with the first 24 h
as spin-up time. This period has high temperature, low wind speed, and
low cloud cover, which are the typical meteorological conditions for the
formation of UHI [36] and heatwave. This simulation period has more
prominent UHI and thus higher potential of heat-stress related hazard
than normal period. Therefore, this study period allows us to investigate
the maximum cooling effect of cool and green roofs.
Simulated 2 m air temperature (Ta) and relative humidity (RH), and
10 m wind speed (U) were evaluated against observations from nine
meteorological stations (Fig. 1b). Detailed information on these stations
is listed in Table 2. Root-mean-square error (RMSE), mean bias (MB),
and Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) were chosen to evaluate the
model performance.
2.3. Quantification of human thermal comfort
We used the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) to quantify
human thermal comfort. UTCI is an equivalent temperature defined as
the air temperature in the reference condition, at which the heat budget
of the human body is in equilibrium with the same core and skin tem­
perature as under the actual condition (UTCI official website,
http://www.utci.org/). UTCI is based on the most advanced multi-node
model of thermoregulation and it has an easily understandable unit ◦ C
[37,38]. UTCI is governed by four meteorological parameters: air tem­
perature, humidity, wind speed, and radiation. Radiation is further
expressed by the difference between mean radiant temperature (Tmrt)
The RayMan model [39,40] was used to estimate Tmrt and UTCI. The
RayMan model is a Windows-based software that offers different input
opportunities to estimate Tmrt, which is necessary for computing
human-biometeorological indices. The following variables from the
WRF/UCM modeling are input into the RayMan model: date, time,
longitude, latitude, air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, land
surface temperature, albedo, and global radiation. To represent thermal
stress under certain thermal environments, UTCI equivalent tempera­
ture is categorized into 10 thermal sensation classes based on the
X. Wang et al.
Fig. 5. Spatial distributions of difference in UTCI (◦ C) between CR0.85/GR_ir and Ref for daytime and nighttime. Daytime values are averaged over the period
between 04:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC; nighttime values are averaged over the period between 20:00 UTC to 03:00 UTC.
corresponding physiological responses [41]. Three classes are used in
this study: no thermal stress (9 ◦ C < UTCI ≤ 26 ◦ C), moderate heat stress
(26 ◦ C < UTCI ≤ 32 ◦ C), and strong heat stress (32 ◦ C < UTCI ≤ 38 ◦ C).
2.4. Design of scenarios
We designed five scenarios with different roof properties (one
reference scenario, two cool roof scenarios, and two green roof sce­
narios) to evaluate the effectiveness of cool and green roofs (Table 3).
The reference scenario (Ref) represents conventional roofs with an
albedo of 0.163 and no vegetation on roof. The albedo value of 0.163 is
obtained from a numerical study in Berlin [27] and is based on average
values of a hyperspectral measurement [42]. We chose to use no vege­
tation to represent conventional roofs in Berlin, since the percentage of
roof surface covered with vegetation is very small (<4%) according to
the Berlin Senate Department of Urban Development and Housing.
The cool roof scenario with very high albedo (CR0.85) was designed
to represent the maximum cooling potential of cool roofs based on the
study of [64], who found that artificial white materials can present very
high albedo with a value up to 0.85. Given the decrease of albedo of aged
cool roofs due to substantial deterioration and dust accumulation [43,
44], we also designed an aged cool roof scenario with a lower albedo of
0.5 (CR0.5). Two green roof scenarios with 100% coverage (GR and
GR_ir) were designed. Soil moisture is an important factor influencing
the performance of green roofs because it determines evapotranspiration
[15] and it can be adjusted by an irrigation scheme in the WRF/UCM
model [45]. In GR_ir scenario, the irrigation scheme is switched on and
the irrigation is scheduled over green roofs at 9 p.m. every day from May
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Building and Environment 217 (2022) 109082
to September and the evapotranspiration is not limited by water avail­
ability during this period. The GR_ir scenario represents the maximum
cooling potential of green roofs. In Section 3, we mainly focus on pre­
senting the results from CR0.85 and GR_ir, which represent the
maximum cooling effect of cool roofs and green roofs. The influence of
aged roofs and irrigation schemes, represented by CR0.5 and GR, is
discussed in Section 4.
3. Results
3.1. Evaluation of model performance
Generally, WRF/UCM simulation shows a good agreement with the
observations with high correlations and low errors (Fig. 2). The corre­
lation coefficients of Ta, RH, and U are 0.97, 0.94, and 0.58, respectively,
and the RMSEs are 1.78 ◦ C, 7.69%, and 1.23 m s− 1. The simulation also
shows a daytime cold and wet bias and a nighttime warm and dry bias
(Fig. 2a and b). For wind speed, the simulation shows an overall over­
estimation (Fig. 2c). But these biases were also reported in previous
studies and were the systematic biases of the model (e.g., [28,46–48,78,
47]). Note that the objective of this study is to compare different sce­
narios but not to improve the model performance. The simulations of all
the scenarios used the same physical schemes and configurations, thus
they are equally biased.
3.2. Impact of cool and green roofs on UHI
Table 4 presents the difference of simulated meteorological variables
X. Wang et al.
Fig. 6. Number of hours per day at each thermal sensation class for reference,
cool roof, and green roofs scenarios. No thermal stress: 9 ◦ C < UTCI≤26 ◦ C;
moderate heat stress:26 ◦ C < UTCI≤32 ◦ C; strong heat stress: 32 ◦ C <
UTCI≤38 ◦ C. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure
legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
between CR0.85/GR_ir and Ref. In Table 4, values are averaged over all
grid cells in Berlin, urban grid cells in Berlin, and non-urban grid cells in
Berlin, respectively. The diurnal cycles of the urban temperature dif­
ference between cool/green roofs and conventional roofs are illustrated
in Fig. 3. Comparison between CR0.85 and GR_ir reveals the differing
effectiveness of these two strategies.
Firstly, both strategies can directly reduce land surface temperature
(LST) because in UCM, LST is the area average of skin temperatures from
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Building and Environment 217 (2022) 109082
roof, wall, and ground surface [32]. Further analysis indicates that the
largest LST reduction occurs over grid cells with a dominant land use of
industrial and commercial area (Fig. 4). This is because this land use
class has the highest roof coverage ratio on average and the lowest in­
fluence from surrounding non-urban surfaces (Table 1). The daytime
reduction of LST averaged over Berlin is 3.10 and 2.76 K for cool and
green roofs, respectively. These two strategies also influence the Ta
(Fig. 3b). The averaged reductions of daytime Ta averaged over Berlin
are 0.80 and 0.65 K for cool and green roofs, respectively (Table 4).
Comparably, the averaged reductions at night for LST and Ta are much
smaller. This is because the mechanism of both strategies is that they
reduce sensible heat flux and heat storage by changing the partitioning
of net all-wave radiation. Since the absolute value of net all-wave ra­
diation is much larger during the day, their daytime influence is more
significant. From Table 4, it can also be found that although cool and
roofs are only implemented over urban grid cells, they also have certain
influences on surrounding non-urban grid cells due to advection effect.
But in general, the impact is higher over urban grid cells than over
non-urban grid cells. During both daytime and nighttime, cool roofs can
reduce more LST and Ta than green roofs. The difference in cooling effect
between these two strategies is larger at night (0.52 K for LST and 0.26 K
for Ta) than during the day (0.34 K for LST and 0.15 K for Ta). One of the
reasons is that heat capacity of green roofs is larger than conventional
roofs due to moist soil [45], which partly offsets the cooling effect of
green roofs at night. In summary, both cool and green roofs can mitigate
UHI by largely reducing urban LST and Ta.
3.3. Impact of cool and green roofs on human thermal comfort
Since cool and green roofs have an influence at the pedestrian level
(Fig. 3), they can also be applied as strategies to improve human thermal
comfort. Fig. 5 shows the daytime and nighttime spatial distribution of
UTCI difference between CR0.85/GR_ir and Ref. The daytime UTCI re­
ductions averaged over the whole area of Berlin are 0.60 K and 0.44 K
for cool and green roofs, respectively. At night, the UTCI in CR0.85 still
shows a reduction of 0.36 K, while the UTCI in GR_ir only shows an
overall minor decrease of 0.06 K. Over urban grid cells, GR_ir shows a
slight increase in UTCI (Table 4, Fig. 5). The difference in UTCI-reducing
Fig. 7. Impact of green and cool roofs on urban sur­
face energy balance components: (a) net all-wave
radiation (Rn), (b) sensible heat flux (SH), (c) latent
heat flux (LH), and (d) ground heat flux (G). Upward
flux is defined as positive. Each curve represents the
difference between the corresponding scenario and
the reference scenario. All values are averaged over­
urban grid cells in Berlin and averaged over 18–19
July 2014. (For interpretation of the references to
colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to
the Web version of this article.)
X. Wang et al.
potential of these two strategies is also larger at night (0.32 K) than
during the day (0.16 K).
The two mitigation strategies also affected the duration of thermal
stress. In the reference scenario, there is heat stress of different degrees
from 08:00 UTC to 19:00 UTC. Strong heat stress lasts for 7 h and occurs
from 10:00–16:00 UTC, while moderate heat stress occurs at
08:00–09:00 UTC and 17:00–19:00 UTC (not shown here). When cool
and green roofs are implemented, the duration of strong heat stress is
reduced from 7 h to 5 h, but the total duration of heat stress and the
duration of no thermal stress remain the same (Fig. 6). This indicates
that cool and green roofs can mitigate the intensity of daytime heat
stress during the study period, but they cannot totally eliminate heat
stress.
4. Discussion
4.1. Mechanism of roof strategies impact on human thermal comfort
Human thermal comfort is influenced by the combined effect of
temperature, humidity, wind, and radiation, and the UTCI is calculated
using these four variables. To understand the change of UTCI in cool and
green roof scenarios, we conducted a comprehensive comparison of
other influencing variables of UTCI between mitigation scenarios and
the reference scenario, including RH, U, and Tmrt (Table 4). Further­
more, we investigated the change of surface energy balance to explore
the mechanism behind the changes of influencing variables and UTCI
(Fig. 7).
Both cool and green roofs increase RH (Table 4). Both strategies lead
to lower sensible heat flux (Fig. 7b), which restrains vertical mixing of
water vapor. Under this condition, the atmosphere is more affected by
the advection of moisture from surrounding rural areas, leading to an
increase in RH [15]. For cool roofs, higher RH, in turn, suppresses
evaporation and causes lower latent heat flux (Fig. 7c). For green roofs,
the increase in evapotranspiration (larger latent heat flux, Fig. 6c) due to
moist soil further increases RH, especially when irrigation is imple­
mented. Wind speed is reduced in both cool and green roof scenarios
(Table 4), which is, again, due to the lower sensible heat flux (Fig. 7a)
and the subsequently enhanced atmospheric stability. With weakened
vertical mixing, the momentum transfer between upper-level air and
low-level air is reduced, thus the low-level air retains a lower wind speed
in the mitigation scenarios. Furthermore, the reduction of wind speed
over urban grid cells mainly occurs during the daytime, and the
nocturnal wind fields are almost the same in all three scenarios. This is
because the reduction of sensible heat flux at night is much smaller than
during the day (Fig. 7b). Tmrt is the temperature corresponding to the
sum of all radiation components from all directions received by the
human body [39,40,49]. Both mitigation strategies can reduce Tmrt
(Table 4), which is caused by the decline in outgoing long-wave radia­
tion due to lower LST (Fig. 3a). For cool roofs, the reduction of Ta is
smaller than the reduction of Tmrt, during both daytime and night-time,
thus, Tmrt-Ta is reduced (Table 3). For green roofs, Tmrt-Ta is reduced
during daytime but slightly enhanced during nighttime.
When Ta is between 20 and 30 ◦ C, UTCI positively correlates with Ta,
Tmrt-Ta, and relative humidity, but negatively correlates with wind speed
[50]. Thus, the increase in relative humidity and the decrease in wind
speed hinder human thermal comfort. Lower UTCI averaged over the
whole area of Berlin is attributed to reduced Ta and Tmrt-Ta (except for
green roofs at nighttime).
4.2. Implications
Our study verified the effectiveness of cool and green roofs in miti­
gating UHI and improving human thermal comfort. For the cool roof, the
cooling effect differs between a new and an aged cool roof. When roof
albedo is reduced by 40% from 0.85 to 0.5, the cooling effect of cool
roofs is restrained. On average, the cooling effect declines 47% for LST
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Building and Environment 217 (2022) 109082
and 41% for Ta (scenario CR0.85 and CR0.5 in Fig. 3). The decrease in
roof albedo is usually caused by dust accumulation and deterioration of
roof material. The results indicate the necessity of periodic cleaning and
maintenance of cool roofs. To maintain the maximum cooling potential
of cool roofs, rooftops need to be cleaned or repainted periodically. For
green roofs, higher soil moisture caused by daily irrigation contributes
to a larger cooling effect. Without daily irrigation, the cooling effect of
green roofs also shows a decline (scenario GR_ir and GR in Fig. 3). The
average reduction of cooling effect is 14% for LST and 22% for Ta. This
shows the importance of daily irrigation on green roofs.
Our study solely reveals the difference between cool roofs and green
roofs in reducing urban temperature and improving human thermal
comfort. But when implementing these strategies, there are much more
factors to consider in terms of applicability, investment, and mainte­
nance. For instance, in arid or semi-arid regions, the cost of irrigation
water should be considered when implementing a green roofs strategy.
Additionally, not all rooftops are suitable for the implementation of
green roofs, and factors such as the tilt angle of pitched roofs should be
considered. Previous studies suggest that the angle should not exceed
35◦ [51]. Furthermore, the meteorological condition in our study period
is most typical for the formation of UHI, and therefore, our results reveal
the maximum effect of cool and green roofs in reducing urban temper­
ature and UTCI. However, this period is too short to draw a more general
conclusion on the long-term effectiveness of cool and green roofs. Future
studies should also take the above-mentioned aspects into account.
5. Conclusions
In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of cool and green roofs
in terms of mitigating UHI and improving human thermal comfort using
the WRF/UCM model and the RayMan model. Averaged over the whole
area of Berlin, the daytime (nighttime) reductions of Ta for CR0.85 and
GR_ir are 0.80 K (0.65 K) and 0.71 K (0.26 K), respectively. Thus, in
terms of temperature reduction, cool roofs with the maximum roof al­
bedo are more effective than green roofs with daily irrigation, especially
at night. The duration of strong heat stress during the study period can
be reduced by these two strategies from 7 h d− 1 to 5 h d− 1, but the total
duration of heat stress remains the same (12 h d− 1). Although the daily
distributions of thermal sensation classes are the same in both scenarios,
the reduction of UTCI of cool roofs is 0.16 K (0.32 K) higher than green
roofs during daytime (nighttime). Results also indicate the necessity of
periodic cleaning and maintenance of cool roofs and the importance of
daily irrigation on green roofs. Our study can build a reference for future
studies on UHI mitigation strategies and their impact on human thermal
comfort.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Xun Wang: Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – original draft,
Visualization, Conceptualization. Huidong Li: Methodology, Writing –
review & editing, Conceptualization. Sahar Sodoudi: Funding acquisi­
tion, Supervision, Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
This study was supported by the working group Urban Climate and
Health working group, Institute of Meteorology, Freie Universität Berlin.
It contributes to the research program ‘Urban Climate Under Change
([UC]2)’, funded by the German Ministry of Research and Education
(FKZ01LP1602A).
X. Wang et al. Building and Environment 217 (2022) 109082

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