Page 352 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 4

Suggestions For the Parametrization of Urban Characteristics to
Increase the Climate Resilience of Cities in Türkiye

In this research, by making use of the studies dedicated to measurement,
monitoring and evaluation of the relationship between urban characteristics
that cause cities to show different climate characteristics and the changes in the
elements of climate, some suggestions are presented for the parameterization
of urban characteristics which can be taken into account in the studies to be
carried in Türkiye, and for the data sets and sources of these parameters. In
this context, after a long-term study, WMO (2023), which is a guide source by
the World Meteorological Organization, for monitoring the impact of urban
characteristics on the elements of climate, was used. Based on the studies
focused on the impacts of cities on climate change, it is aimed to identify the
site-specific urban features that force the climate characteristics to change,
and to draw a general framework for creating parameters and data for the
measurement, monitoring and evaluation of these features.

2. The effects that force the urban climate characteristics to change
Cities are the areas hosting the human activities that produce the highest
greenhouse gas emissions on earth (UNEP 2023). Cities, with an area size of
only 2 to 3% of the earth’s surface (Liu et al. 2014), account for 75% of the CO2
emissions produced in the world due to human-induced effects, including
activities such as transportation, housing and industrial production that
produce the highest amount of CO2 (UNEP 2023). With these characteristics,
cities contribute to climate change by forcing the climate system globally,
while they are more exposed to the effects of climate change than other
areas of the world (IPCC 2018; Milesi and Churkina 2020). The reason for
this high level of exposure and vulnerability is the rapid growth of the urban
population. While the human movement from rural to urban areas, which
started with the Industrial Revolution and continues even today, increased the
urban population worldwide to 14% of the total population in the 1920s, the
urban population exceeded the rural population for the first time in 2008.
(UNDP 2009; UNDP 2014). Physically and socioeconomically growing cities
are hosting more than half of the world’s population today, and it is predicted
that this rate will reach 70% in 2050 (UN DESA 2018).
Greenhouse gas and particulate matter (aerosol) emissions caused by
human activities in urban areas and disruption of the urban heat balance by
physical differentiation arising from urbanization are considered as two main
reasons that differentiate urban climates from the climate characteristics
prevailing in the natural (rural) areas in their immediate surroundings (Oke
1973, Landsberg 1981; Arnfield 2003). Micro, local and meso-scale differences
in urban climates compared to rural areas (WMO 2023) start with the change
in the heat and water vapor (humidity) balance of the urban environment

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