The greenhouse effect from the large cities could be easily diminished if a third of the roofs would be painted in white.
The American scientists, supported by the government representatives say that such an initiative would reduce significantly the global warming .
A recent study of the representatives from the Institute for Atmosphere Research in US supported by Live Science shows that painting the buildings in white in the city area would have significant effects on the process of fighting against the global warming.
Hashem Akbari, doctor at the Lawrence Berkeley California National laboratory sustains the theory saying that painting in white a hundred of the largest cities of the world could completely remove the carbon dioxide emissions from the last ten years.
Although the buildings and the white surfaces present a higher reflection of the sun than the ones painted in darker colors, this does not contribute in diminishing the greenhouse effect.
Still the scientists say that in the case in which the surface of several buildings will be whitened the percentage of heat absorbed by them will be a lot smaller. This way the residents and the workers from those areas will use a lot less the air conditioning which consumes a large amount of power and is an important source of pollution.
Akbari has calculated that repainting in white 100 of the largest cities of the world would increase the light amount reflected by the world with 0.03%. This way the effect of around 44 billion tons of carbon emissions would be completely neutralized.
The roofs are the first that need to be changed or painted in white and such an effort at a local scale can be set in motion only by an organization.
Still, the scientist underlines that this way the effects of the global warming will not be cancelled but they would be considerably delayed. The atmosphere would be allowed to breathe and it won’t take too long for this benefit to be noticed by the authorities.
The sunrays would reflect on the roofs of the freshly painted buildings and the city would cool down. The phesability of such an initiative still bears a question mark but the initiative met governmental support in the US government and the EU declares itself open minded about the matter.
The cities are a lot more vulnerable to the climate changes because the development of the real estate market attracts the usage of several construction materials that retain the heat.
Another cause of the greenhouse effect is the heat resulted from the energy consumption and as the cities tend to grow in size the medium temperature inside them grows exponentially.
A small quantity of solar rays that would reflect on the white roofs would go back to space and the temperature inside the cities would be decreased by 0.4 degrees, and all this because of some white paint. Maybe simple solutions are the ones that will save our world.
