Sustainable URban Futures (SURF) Lab

@ The University of Oklahoma

Month: January 2024

New paper on extreme fire weather published in Scientific Reports

By

On 2024-01-23

In New Publications

Our new paper, “Extreme fire weather in Chile driven by climate change and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)“, is published in Scientific Reports (IF: 4.6).

The paper and its supporting information can be downloaded at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-52481-x.

Authors: Raúl R. Cordero, Sarah Feron, Alessandro Damiani, Jorge Carrasco, Cyrus Karas, Chenghao Wang, Clarisse T. Kraamwinkel, and Anne Beaulieu

Abstract: A string of fierce fires broke out in Chile in the austral summer 2023, just six years after the record-breaking 2017 fire season. Favored by extreme weather conditions, fire activity has dramatically risen in recent years in this Andean country. A total of 1.7 million ha. burned during the last decade, tripling figures of the prior decade. Six of the seven most destructive fire seasons on record occurred since 2014. Here, we analyze the progression during the last two decades of the weather conditions associated with increased fire risk in Central Chile (30°–39° S). Fire weather conditions (including high temperatures, low humidity, dryness, and strong winds) increase the potential for wildfires, once ignited, to rapidly spread. We show that the concurrence of El Niño and climate-fueled droughts and heatwaves boost the local fire risk and have decisively contributed to the intense fire activity recently seen in Central Chile. Our results also suggest that the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean variability modulates the seasonal fire weather in the country, driving in turn the interannual fire activity. The signature of the warm anomalies in the Niño 1 + 2 region (0°–10° S, 90° W–80° W) is apparent on the burned area records seen in Central Chile in 2017 and 2023.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-52481-x

Fig. 1. A severe drought worsened by persistent heatwaves fueled fierce fires in February 2023 in Central Chile. (a) Precipitation for February 2023 relative to the 1981–2010 mean. The dry February 2023 came on top of the megadrought that has affected central Chile since 2008. (b) Air temperature for February 2023 relative to the 1981–2010 mean. February 2023 was the warmest on record in Central Chile. (c) Fire Weather Index (FWI) for February 2023 relative to the 1981–2010 mean. Extreme anomalies were registered in the regions severely affected by fires. (d) False-color image acquired on 3 February 2023 by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 showing the burn scar of Santa Juana Fire, in the BioBio Region, 100 km southeast of Concepcion, the second most populated city in the country.

Dr. Wang received a single-PI NSF grant

By

On 2024-01-18

In Other

Dr. Wang was recently awarded a single-PI National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. The grant titled “An Integrated Urban Meteorological and Building Stock Modeling Framework to Enhance City-level Building Energy Use Predictions” began on Jan 1, 2024 and is expected to conclude on Dec 31, 2025.

See OU News here: https://www.ou.edu/research-norman/news-events/2024/two-ou-researchers-receive-nsf-epscor-research-fellowships.

New paper on urban waste production published in Nature Cities

By

On 2024-01-18

In New Publications

Our new paper, “Worldwide scaling of waste generation in urban systems“, is published in Nature Cities.

The paper and its supporting information can be downloaded at https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-023-00021-5. Data collected and compiled in this study are available in the figshare repository: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19361675.

Authors: Mingzhen Lu, Chuanbin Zhou, Chenghao Wang, Robert B. Jackson, Christopher P. Kempes

Abstract: The production of waste as a consequence of human activities is one of the most fundamental challenges facing our society and global ecological systems. Waste generation is rapidly increasing, with corresponding shifts in the structure of our societies, where almost all nations are moving from rural agrarian societies to urban and technological ones. However, the connections between these societal shifts and waste generation have not yet been described. In this study we applied scaling theory to establish a new understanding of waste in urban systems and identified universal scaling laws of waste generation across diverse urban systems worldwide for three forms of waste: wastewater, municipal solid waste, and greenhouse gases. We found that wastewater generation scales superlinearly, municipal solid waste scales linearly, and greenhouse gas emissions scale sublinearly with city size. In specific cases, production can be understood in terms of city size coupled with financial and natural resources. For example, wastewater generation can be understood in terms of the increased economic activity of larger cities, and the deviations from the scaling relationship, indicating relative efficiency, depend on gross domestic product per person and local rainfall. The temporal evolution of these scaling relationships reveals a loss of economies of scale and a general increase in waste production, where sublinear scaling relationships become linear. Our findings suggest general mechanisms controlling waste generation across diverse cities and global urban systems. Our approach offers a systematic framework to uncover these underlying mechanisms that might be key to reducing waste and pursuing a more sustainable future.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-023-00021-5

Fig. 1. Scaling law of waste production across cities worldwide. a, Geolocation of the cities included in this study from three distinct data sources. MoHURD, Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development (China). The map was generated using R with the ‘ggplot2’ package. b, Wastewater production scales superlinearly with the size of cities (β = 1.15 ± 0.04, n = 675). We highlight two example cities (black circles) that stand out with a large deviation from the scaling law. Dongguan, an industrial city of southern China that features high personal wealth and high annual precipitation, generates disproportionately more wastewater than expected given its size. In contrast, the northwestern city of Tianshui, which features much lower personal wealth and rainfall, generates much less wastewater than expected given its size. c, MSW production scales linearly with city size (β = 1.04 ± 0.05, n = 292). We highlight Seattle (United States) and Lilongwe (Malawi) as two cities that deviate from the general scaling relationship. The much richer Seattle produces eight times more municipal waste than Lilongwe, even though it has a smaller population. d, The emission of GHGs displays sublinear scaling across cities worldwide (β = 0.85 ± 0.1, n = 296). We highlight Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and Bandung (Indonesia) as two cities that deviate from the general scaling relationship, with Rotterdam producing disproportionately more GHGs. The purpose of highlighting certain high- and low-residual cities is to give concrete examples so that readers can relate to the abstract data points presented here (no subjective judgements are made here). The dark gray error bands in b–d represent the CIs of each scaling relationship.

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