Investigation on Airport Landscape Cooling Associated with Irrigation: A Case Study of Adelaide Airport, Australia

Jingming Qian, Shujiang Miao, Nigel Tapper, Jianguang Xie and Greg Ingleton
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Jingming Qian: Joint Research Centre for Future Cities, Southeast University-Monash University Joint Graduate School, Suzhou 215123, China
Shujiang Miao: School of Civil Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Nigel Tapper: School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University, Clayton 3800, Australia
Jianguang Xie: Department of Civil Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
Greg Ingleton: Business Development Management, South Australian Water, Adelaide 5000, Australia

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 19, 1-16

Abstract: Extreme summertime heat is becoming a major issue for aircraft operations. As global temperatures continue to rise, some of the heaviest planes on the longest flights may eventually be unable to depart during the hottest part of summer days. During summer days, some airports have to reduce the payload of aircraft, including cargo and/or passengers in the hotter days of summer. Nonetheless, there is no existing body of research on the potential for airport cooling. Furthermore, extreme heat on the ground also affects airport workers; loading and unloading luggage and servicing platforms between flights could become more arduous. With global warming proceeding, it is becoming increasingly urgent to find a suitable strategy to cool airport environments, perhaps by irrigation of a vegetated landscape. All airports have large enclosed areas (usually of grass) acting as a buffer between airport activities and the adjacent industrial, commercial and residential land utilization. This paper describes the trial of irrigating the buffer area of Adelaide airport and analyzes the performance of irrigation cooling for Adelaide airport, examining whether this can benefit human thermal comfort. Results indicate that irrigation provides cooling, and the cooling effect reduces along with the increasing instance from the middle of the irrigation area. At 15:00, the average air temperature was 1.8 °C cooler in the middle of the irrigation area than in the non-irrigation area, and the relative humidity was 5.8% higher during the trial period. On an extremely hot day (the maximum air temperature was 45.4 °C), it was 1.5 °C cooler in the middle of the irrigation area than upwind the of irrigation area, and 0.8 °C cooler than downwind of the irrigation area at 13:00. Human thermal comfort (HTC) is unfavorable in the runway, but greater improvements can be made through promotion of irrigation.

Keywords: irrigation; landscape cooling; cooling effect; airport; human thermal comfort; extreme heat (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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