@article{7859bd76566e41009a4fb8a2489e8e9c,
title = "Effects of urbanization and global climate change on regional climate in the Pearl River Delta and thermal comfort implications",
abstract = "Urbanization and climate change are affecting regional climate; therefore, thermal comfort should be fully understood, especially from a public health perspective. We applied a climate model driven by a combination of land-cover development and two representative concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) to predict composite climatic adjustments in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) in China. Our findings showed that a 10% increase in urban land cover can cause a 0.11 K increase in surface temperature in PRD, and urban temperature will rise by 0.15–0.21 K because of global climate change alone. We found that urbanization has marginal effects on thermal comfort despite increasing surface temperature in PRD. Moreover, global climate change will increase the frequency at which temperatures exceed critical temperatures reported in the literature and the extreme heat stress level (95th percentile of baseline year). Our findings offer a scientific basis for understanding heat-related health risk and climate change adaptation in urban areas.",
keywords = "climate change, heat stress, thermal comfort, urban climate, urbanization",
author = "Yongli Wang and Allen Chan and Lau, {Gabriel Ngar Cheung} and Qingxiang Li and Yuanjian Yang and Yim, {Steve Hung Lam}",
note = "Funding Information: This work was jointly supported by the Early Career Scheme of Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Grant No. ECS-24301415), and the Vice Chancellor{\textquoteright}s Discretionary Fund of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK, Grant No. 4930744). We would like to thank the Hong Kong Observatory for providing meteorological data. We acknowledge the support of the CUHK Central High-Performance Computing Cluster, on which computation in this work have been performed. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Funding Information: Early Career Scheme of Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, Grant/Award Number: ECS-24301415; the Vice Chancellor{\textquoteright}s Discretionary Fund of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Grant/Award Number: 4930744 Funding Information: This work was jointly supported by the Early Career Scheme of Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Grant No. ECS-24301415), and the Vice Chancellor's Discretionary Fund of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK, Grant No. 4930744). We would like to thank the Hong Kong Observatory for providing meteorological data. We acknowledge the support of the CUHK Central High-Performance Computing Cluster, on which computation in this work have been performed. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 Royal Meteorological Society",
year = "2019",
month = may,
doi = "10.1002/joc.5996",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "39",
pages = "2984--2997",
journal = "International Journal of Climatology",
issn = "0899-8418",
publisher = "John Wiley and Sons Ltd",
number = "6",
}