Saturday, November 22, 2008

Paint the city white

Global warming is on a rise due to a number of reasons, melting ice caps of arctic ocean is one of them. white color reflects more heat than any other color. Melting ice is changing the color of the northern hemisphere from white to a much darker color this is acting as a catalyst in the global warming. Can painting our rooftops white compensate the melting ice effect of the Arctic? My simple logic says yes but no idea to what extent...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Srinu...

Thats an interesting idea and it may help to some extent, but cannot entirely compensate the melting ice effect.
Let me elaborate it. The melting ice is not just changing the color. The actual issue is that the melting ice creates lot of water. While ice reflects light (heat), water absorbs some and heats up more. This will inturn melt more ice, creating a spiralling effect.

Like you know, its more effective to reduce the green house gases - so that the heat will not be "contained" by the atmosphere. Otherwise, the light (heat) your white-painted rooftops reflect may not really escape the atmosphere... some of it will come back... :)

Ravi M

srinivas chenna said...

Ravi,
painting roof tops white will at least reduce the rate at which global warming happening currently, so we will have some more time to reduce the green house gases. Reducing emissions suddenly is not economically a technically viable. I feel the best thing is try to slow down the process and buy some time to act on the root cause.