Speaker: Aaron Alexander, postdoctoral researcher, Civil & Environmental Engineering, UW–Madison
Urbanization substantially changes how water and heat move in the atmosphere, and those effects can be seen in cities like Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Streets, sidewalks, and buildings, critical to the modern way of life, create more runoff and trap more heat. This causes a “double whammy”: hotter days and more flooding. Further complicating matters, increases in extreme rainfall and heat caused by human-induced climate change are often felt even stronger in cities. In response, cities around the globe, like Milwaukee, are implementing urban resiliency plans that feature nature-based solutions or green infrastructure, aimed to reduce flooding impacts. While these plans may provide benefits to flooding and heat, and other climate feedbacks like rainfall, we still do not understand how effective they are at the scale that city planners need. In this talk, we will first examine how climate models represent cities and discuss how the inclusion of nature based solutions can change urban environment during heatwaves and rainstorms within Milwaukee. We also examine the potential changes to water and heat in Milwaukee by simulating the city-scale impacts of their Regional Green infrastructure Plan across an entire summertime.