Increasing urban vegetation will become essential for our three largest cities to reduce serious heatwave impacts by 2060-2080, finds a new report by the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub.

Temperature check: Greening Australia’s warming cities, finds:

• Hot summer days in Brisbane and Melbourne are expected to regularly top 40°C by 2060-2080, and up to 50°C in Sydney, with a phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect likely to add several degrees on top of this in highly vulnerable suburbs.
• The areas most vulnerable to the additional heat caused by the UHI effect are typically disadvantaged suburbs with less protective tree canopy cover.
• Hobart is the only capital city that has more tree cover in 2020 than it did in 2013.
• More vegetation in cities helps address rising temperatures, improves physical and mental health, extends the life of infrastructure, captures carbon emissions, provides habitat for wildlife and reduces the economic burden of heat-related impacts.

The Monash research is the first study to examine the cumulative effects of future climate change and the UHI effect at local government level across Australia’s three largest cities.

More information here