This sixty-minute Channel 4 documentary on Britain’s Extreme Weather: Superstorms and Heatwaves was broadcast in August. Maria contributed on the topic of how to cool our cities based on her urban heat island research projects.
The documentary features archive footage, personal stories and striking visuals of tornadoes, torrential rain, lightning storms and flash floods during Britain’s recent heatwave, and the latest science to reveal why this is happening. Is this part of a developing global pattern of record extreme weather? Can our ageing infrastructure, with damaged dams, melting roads, buckled railways and burst sewers, cope with this ever more brutal onslaught? What effect will this have on our agriculture and the cost of living and how will we live in our overheated cities?
With more of us living in cities, heat islands are undoubtedly a problem. Unless our urban planning changes, in the future, parts of our cities could become unlivable.