How can we keep our city and our homes cool and green in a heating world?

Overview

This webinar will explore the theme of Urban Heat Islands – how and why our urban spaces are becoming hotter than the countryside that surrounds them. What can we do to make our homes, workplaces and communities more resilient to hot weather, and at the same time more pleasant places to dwell?

Heatwaves are increasing, even in Manchester: the results can be overheated and sleep-deprived people, stretched NHS and electricity grids struggling to cope with the demands of air conditioning. Night-time is perhaps the worst, especially for the very old and very young: those least able to regulate their body temperature and for whom heatwaves can be deadly. A 2024 UK parliamentary report has described summer heat as “the silent killer”. Heat stresses us physically and emotionally.

A seemingly easy solution to a hot home or work space might seem to be air con – but this has an energy cost and is part of a vicious circle as we warm the outside space making our neighbours even hotter.

In this webinar we will have input from:

Geoff Levermore, Emeritus Professor of the Built Environment at Manchester University, who has been conducting a study over several years into temperatures in our city – thanks to continuous readings from data logging at points in Central Manchester. Geoff has a fascinating story to tell about the impacts of lockdown, of traffic and of trees.

Thomas Ashfield is a façade meteorologist and climate consultant for a facade engineering consultancy, he is a passionate advocate of care for climate, providing advice for how the external surfaces of buildings can help to provide climate resilience, especially in the face of heating, and reduce energy demands. He will translate some of his experience into advice that can be applied to homes generally.

Meteorology was one of the subjects close to the heart of the early members of the Lit and Phil: John Dalton, polymath, chemist and long-time president of the Lit and Phil, recorded the temperatures outside his central Manchester home three times a day for over twenty years. We have ever more reason to care about those temperatures now!