Chicago summers are getting harder to sit through, and a six-day heatwave in August 2021 gave scientists a real-world test case. In a new study published in Science of the Total Environment, researchers at Argonne National Laboratory modeled the effects of replacing all rooftops in the Chicago metropolitan area with a cooler surface. The results were notable. Using white cool roofs lowered near-surface air temperature by an average of 1.5 degrees Celsius across the metro area, and cut cooling energy demand by 16.6 percent on average.
How scientists tested a fix for an entire city
