Is
walking on a noonday in July asphalt street in Phoenix any less
challenging that walking over hot coals in Honolulu? Asphalt streets
absorb sunshine; a huge amount of it to release the heat during the
day and the night creating micro-climates and global warming synergy.
It would be good to make roads white to increase reflectivity and the
national albedo, yet better to make it white and solar voltaic or
electron capturing to produce electricity for electric cars.
People
usually really don't understand how many square miles of asphalt
exist in the nation or the total capture of extra solar heat in
comparison to natural earth and plants on the same places.
The
June 2018 temperature average was the third highest in U.S. history a
bit more than 3 degrees above
average. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/national-climate-201806
If
one considers just Arizona's addition to national average temperature
with asphalt roads, parking lots and fossil fuel exhaust going up
into the atmosphere and wind flowing east to warm up the already warm
Gulf Coast with its already warmed Gulf of Mexico waters its easy to
understand the 3 degree higher temperature.
There are, according to the national asphalt association, more than 2.7 million miles of asphalt roads in the U.S.A. In fact 94% of roads are paved with asphalt. That is a good way to heat up the night. Asphalt is partly at fault for global warming.
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