Using station-pair to elucidate the cooling effect of vegetation in megacities
Zixuan Tang, Jing Tian, Yongqiang Zhang, Junlong Zhang, Xuanze Zhang, Ning Ma · 2026
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Description
Tang and colleagues measure how much city greenery cools the air in 2026 by pairing weather stations across three Chinese megacity regions, Beijing, Shanghai, and the Pearl River Delta cluster. Their station-pair regression links temperature gaps between matched sites to vegetation differences read from satellite images, plus water distance, wind, and elevation. Summer data ran from 2016 to 2020, and the models fit well, scoring 0.71 for Beijing, 0.58 for Shanghai, and 0.82 for the delta cluster.
Against fully built-up land, existing vegetation lowered air temperature by 2.43 degrees in Beijing, 0.58 degrees in Shanghai, and 2.74 degrees in the delta cluster on summer days. Shanghai's smaller effect hints that humid coastal air blunts what planting can do, a nuance planners in similar climates should weigh before promising relief. The authors offer the numbers as an evidence base for placing green infrastructure where its cooling buys the most comfort.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Zixuan Tang, Jing Tian, Yongqiang Zhang, Junlong Zhang, Xuanze Zhang, Ning Ma |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 45 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |