Urban cooling: This LA street bounces back heat into space

The special coating not only cools the road but also “produces a cooler neighbourhood”.

Hyderabad: A street in the Winnetka neighbourhood in Los Angeles, United States, has painted its pavement with a special reflective coating. The special coating not only cools the road but also “produces a cooler neighbourhood”.

If scientists from the International Space Station were to look at the street with a thermal camera, standing out from the sweltering red and orange blob will be a crescent of cool, blueish-white deep in the area.

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Greg Spotts, Chief Sustainability Officer of the City’s Bureau of Street Services (Streets LA), is proud of these wintry-looking pixels. “The locations near the cool pavement were, on average, two degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the surrounding area. Previously, our measurements were focused on measuring the surface temperature of the roadway itself, which showed a difference of 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit on hot days,” he said, as per the website ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’.

And LA will turn cooler in the coming days! Apparently, ten other streets in ten neighbourhoods have been treated with this cooling paint. Wondering how? Bright yellow trucks are set to roll through West Hollywood and South LA to spray white coating on the street. Now, how awesome is that!

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