The weather phenomenon wasn’t strictly along the coast. Dodgers Stadium, 16 miles from the Pacific Ocean, could be a gloomy place to watch a day game. In San Diego, fog could get so heavy on State Route 163 east of Miramar Air Base — 10 miles inland — that cars would have to pull off the road.

But such fog is more rare nowadays. A study released this month documents and explains this change:

Summertime fog that helps keep coastal Southern California cool and damp appears to be melting away, and scientists who have documented nearly 70 years of its decline think they can explain why: concrete.

The urban heat island effect, the phenomenon of cities warming faster than surrounding countryside, is a main culprit for a two-thirds reduction in the number of foggy mornings in Los Angeles since 1948 … .

When dense stratus clouds that blanket the eastern reaches of the northern Pacific Ocean roll over Los Angeles and San Diego, they tend to keep low to the ground, manifesting in some areas as fog. That fog quenches rain-starved woodlands and grasslands and acts like sunscreen for buildings and landscapes. That helps coastal Southern Californians save energy on air conditioning during summer. It also sustains native ecosystems and it reduces the region’s notorious wildfire risks.

After analyzing reams of data on summer cloud heights at 24 airfields near the coast, a group of researchers led by Columbia University on Thursday became the latest to describe a decline in fog levels along the Californian coastline — and the first to link such declines with the urban heat island effect. (Other research has demonstrated the effects of ocean cycles on fogginess.) The new study focused on the warmest months, when the fog is most prevalent and most influential.

The researchers detected changes in the heights of clouds’ lower levels, concluding that they’re being pulled up to higher altitudes. The changes were linked to rising temperatures in cities. At these higher altitudes, the clouds are no longer experienced as fog, nor do they serve all of fog’s cooling functions. Higher-altitude clouds also risk being squeezed out of existence by atmospheric forces, allowing the sun to shine more intensely over the landscape.

The summertime fog trends were found to be strongest in the early morning. The frequency with which Los Angeles was fogged over at 7 a.m. declined by 64 percent between 1948 and 2014. Declines in San Diego were less pronounced, yet still statistically significant.

That summary of the study is from the Climate Central website.

By Wayne Lusvardi

California is  subtly shifting the spending goals of its cap-and-trade taxes from reducing air pollution to reducing the “urban heat island effect.”  In so doing, it believes it has found a green justification finally to divert pollution taxes to pet political low-income constituencies of the majority Democratic Party.

In 2012, the California legislature passed a law to divert cap-and-trade taxes to low-income communities under Senate Bill 535. But that legislation needed a scientific justification for diverting taxes these communities, many of which have less air pollution than wealthier but smog-prone suburban communities.

Now, Gov. Jerry Brown’s Office of Planning and Research has found what it believes will be a scientific justification for redistributing cap-and-trade taxes from the suburbs to low-income communities: reducing the urban heat island effect.

The urban heat island effect is defined as a “higher-temperature ‘dome’ of heat created over an urban or industrial area by hot layers forming at building top or chimney level.” The “heat island effect” disappears by midday, when temperatures rise, so it technically should be called the “nighttime urban heat island effect.”  The science behind reducing urban heat island effects has been seriously questioned by scientists from California’s highest institutions of learning.

Green smokescreens for wealth redistribution

Anthony Watts reports on his website WattsUpWithThat.com that the motivation for this project is to provide justification for CalEnviroScreen.  This is a so-called scientific-based method for lessening environmental impacts on disadvantaged communities.  In other words, neighborhoods near freeways or smokestack industries might end up with utility bill subsidies or green jobs projects to offset “global warming” by reducing urban hot spots.

Ironically, the alleged low-income victims of urban heat islands are the same people who travel on hot concrete surface freeways.  How are wealthier suburbs any less affected by the urban heat island effects from freeways than industrial areas?

The shift from reducing air pollution to reducing urban hot spots is politically necessary because California government has to concoct some green justification for failing to clean up suburban smog. Air pollution doesn’t stay put in the Los Angeles Air Basin or anywhere else.  In Los Angeles County, any visible pollution is typically pushed up into the wealthy suburbs near the San Gabriel Mountains, such as Pasadena, Arcadia, Fontana, Rancho Cucamonga and Upland.

Should smoggy and wealthy industrial-based cities — such as the City of Industry, the City of Commerce, and Vernon in Southern California — subsidize “poorer” but clean coastal cities such as Oxnard, National City, and the Wilmington area of Los Angeles?  Where is the science behind such a policy?

Should smoggy inland agricultural cities in the Central Valley — such as Visalia-Porterville, Fresno, Merced and Bakersfield — end up subsidizing green jobs in lower-income industrialized coastal industrial cities that have cleaner coastal air, such as Oakland, Alameda and Richmond?

The governor’s apparent solution to this dilemma is to subtly shift from the air pollution reduction goals of cap and trade to reducing the effects of urban heat islands. Presumably, the suburbs are greener and thus cooler than the central cities and industrial areas.  So cap-and-trade taxes would be diverted from reducing suburban air pollution to reducing urban hot spots in low-income communities, many of which ironically have cleaner air.

Carbon offsets for reducing urban heat islands

This is why California’s Cap and Trade program is considering 25 projects that would, for the first time, allow carbon offset credits. Among the projects being considered are timber harvesting and the reduction of bio-gas from farm animals. The reduction of urban heat islands will likely be added to the list of eligible carbon offset projects.

There is little political compromise between suburbs and cities in this scheme to shift from pollution reduction to reduction in wealth inequality.  Wealthy suburbs won’t get any smog reduction or higher property values in return for being disproportionately taxed to create green jobs programs or utility bill subsidies in lower-income areas.

Opinion polls shows that lower-income communities do not perceive environmental issues as a high cause of concern. The intent of this shift is to buy green votes in blue collar communities at the expense of white collar suburbs that won’t get any real reduction in air pollution specifically from this action.

How the smokescreen of science behind the state’s CalEnviroScreen computer model can withstand legal challenge also is questionable. There is no legal nexus — logical connection — between air pollution emissions and urban heat-island effects. And many lower-income areas arguably have cleaner air than wealthier suburbs.

Making communities cooler would also likely result in worsening the “inversion layer” that traps smog.  The state’s shift from reducing air pollution to reducing urban heat island effects might also end up reducing the credibility of science and, if voters revolt, the Democratic Party supermajorities in the state Legislature that concoct such programs.

By Wayne Lusvardi

More scientific evidence is mounting against California Assembly Bill 296, which would fund pilot projects to eventually mandate Cal-Trans paint roads a lighter color to reduce the so-called “urban heat island effect.”

A new study indicates “cool roads,” combined with the inevitably mandated “cool roofs” of buildings, would severely reduce groundwater supplies in urban areas on a cumulative basis.

The “urban heat island effect” is defined as a “higher-temperature ‘dome’ of heat created over an urban or industrial area by hot layers forming at building top or chimney level.” The “heat island effect” disappears by midday when temperatures rise so it technically should be called the “nighttime urban heat island effect.”

“Cool Roads” a “Health Disaster in the Making”

Last week, Dr. Mark Jacobson, a climatologist at the Stanford Engineering School, said painting road surfaces a lighter color would be “a public health disaster waiting to happen.”  He explained that making the air cooler near the ground surface will worsen the dreaded inversion layer that traps pollution.  An inversion layer is created when a layer of hot air traps colder air below in an urban basin typically rimmed by mountains and the ocean.  All that painting roads white, grey or light green would apparently do is bring back the smog levels that Los Angeles experienced in the 1960s.

“Cool Roads” Would Reduce Urban Groundwater Supplies

Now, a new study from Arizona State University indicates that repainting roofs and roads lighter colors would likely lead to about a 25 percent reduction in urban rainfall over a five year cycle — or 5 percent per year.

The research is summarized in the Sept. 7 issue of Environmental Research Letters. The researchers included Alex Mahalov, the Wilhoit Foundation Dean’s Distinguished Professor or Mathematical and Statistical Sciences.  The research was conducted on what is called Arizona’s “Sun Corridor,” composed of four growing metropolitan areas: Phoenix, Tucson, Prescott and Nogales.

The researchers estimated that the expansion of urban development would reduce rainfall by 12 percent and that “cool roofs” would reduce rainfall another 4 percent per year.

The study concluded: “[T]ruly sustainable development will have to consider impacts extending beyond average temperature” to include impacts on rainfall and groundwater hydrology.  In other words, painting building roofs lighter colors would involve a tradeoff of slightly cooler average air temperature for less urban rainfall.

The amount of additional rainfall reduction from “cool road” surfaces was not specifically estimated by the Arizona State University study. But a guesstimate can be made.

Road surfaces are estimated to cover from 14 percent of the land area in Los Angeles and 26 percent in San Francisco.  So the combination of “cool roofs” and “cool roads” might be about a 5 percent reduction in urban annual rainfall.

For example, a 5 percent reduction in rainfall to the huge Main San Gabriel Water Basin in the suburbs of Los Angeles could rob it of its entire “safe yield” each year. Safe yield is “the annual amount of water that can be taken from a source of supply over a period of years without depleting that source beyond its ability to be replenished naturally in wet years.” The investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to clean up local groundwater basins of contaminants may be jeopardized.

Groundwater supplies about one-third or more of urban water demand in a dry year and about half of that in a wet year in Southern California.

AB 296 Based on Junk Science from Wired Magazine

A podcast circulating widely on the Internet shows Adam Rogers, Senior Editor of Wired Magazine, advocating for “cool roofs” to reduce the impacts of “global warming.”  Rogers bases his advocacy for cool building roofs on unscientific observations from a jet flight over industrial areas around Burbank airports.  Such junk science about how to combat global warming has not only been bought by the public but by policymakers such as Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who is the sponsor of AB 296.

It is junk science to believe that cooling the air near the ground surface would reduce air pollution.  It might reduce temperatures, but it would create more air pollution and unhealthy air.  This is because nature has feedback effects.

For example, bring a microphone near a speaker and you get feedback noise. In a similar fashion, feedback effect happens when trying to reduce urban air temperatures. The feedback from cooler air is greater air pollution.

Hot air rises naturally.  By cooling the air at lower elevations, a relatively warmer layer of air traps the cooler air below creating an inversion layer.  And inversion layers trap pollutants resulting in greater smog.

It is difficult to separate cause and effect in climate and drought research. If AB 296 ends up mandating “white painted roads,” the resulting drop in urban groundwater basins would be falsely used as “proof” of global warming as its cause.   The “political feedback” effect would be to attribute any decline in groundwater on industry-caused global warming to justify Cap and Trade as a taxation mechanism.  AB 296 would likely result in a self-fulfilling prophecy that global warming causes urban droughts. And if one disputed this, one would likely be called a “denier.”

Jerry Brown: The Junk Science Governor?

Jerry Brown frequently portrays his opposition as “unscientific” whether it is on issues such as water and the Sacramento Delta or energy and global warming. But it is clear that AB 296 is based on junk science that reputable scientists say would jeopardize human health and urban groundwater supplies.

AB 296 is now on Brown’s desk for signature, having passed both houses of the state Legislature. The question even science can’t answer: Will Brown choose science or junk science?

By Wayne Lusvardi

A piece of legislation may end up putting Gov. Jerry Brown on the global warming “denier” hot seat.  It’s AB 296, the Cool Pavements Research and Implementation Act,  sponsored by Assembly Member Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley. That is because if Brown signs the bill into law he will have to “deny” accepted global warming science about how inversion layers create smog.

Skinner’s bill would develop definitions, draw up new building codes and allocate $2 million for research and pilot projects to use cooler paving materials on freeways and highways to reduce “global warming” and the local “urban heat island effect.” An “urban heat island effect” is created when soil and vegetation is replaced with impervious paved roads, sidewalks and buildings.

But the proverbial “rubber meets the road” when it comes to the lack of a scientific basis for legally adopting cool road pavement standards.

Cool Pavement Would Be Health Disaster, Says Professor

Mark Jacobson, professor in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, says switching to cooler — and thus lighter colored — road-paving materials to reduce global warming would be a “public health disaster waiting to happen.” He said it is very well known in environmental science that “pollutants would hug the ground surface” if hardened road surfaces were cooler.

According to Jacobson, cooler and lighter-colored road pavement would cause colder and thus more stationary air near the ground surface.  In turn, this would reduce cloudiness and allow more sunlight to reach the ground surface.  Jacobson used the analogy of hot air rising in a room.  He said it would be very difficult to push air upward if it were cooler than hot air above.

Cooler ground surface air would result in the creation of an “inversion layer” that traps pollutants in what we call smog.  To prevent smog, heat and moisture must be allowed to rise to form clouds.

Jacobson further said that any lighter-colored road surface would probably only last a few days until particulate matter from diesel-fueled vehicles and soot from rubber tires darkened the road surface.

Another problem raised by Jacobson was that cooler road paving would only theoretically work better in the summer.  But the extra heating costs in the winter would outweigh those theoretical summer benefits, according to a study done at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Jacobson is an atmospheric scientist.  His research indicates the urban heat island effect is a relatively minor contributor to warming compared to greenhouse gases and particulate black carbon. Jacobson’s research showed that white roofs caused greater net global warming because they resulted in creating an inversion layer.

But Skinner’s cool pavements bill continues to roll toward adoption regardless of a lack of any sound basis in global warming science or health science.

Cool Pavements Bill Steamrolled Through Legislature

AB 296 would require the California Environmental Protection Agency first to define the term “Urban Heat Island Effect” and develop a standard specification for “sustainable or cool pavements.”

Upon the completion of the definition of “urban heat island effect,” Caltrans would be required to develop a standard specification for cool pavements for freeway and highway construction to reduce the “urban heat island effect.”

AB 296 was first introduced in the  Assembly on Feb. 9, 2011.  It was approved in the Assembly on June 1, 2011 along straight Democratic Party lines, 54 to 21 and advanced to the Senate.  It was passed by the State Senate on Aug. 29, 2012 and now goes to the governor for signature.

Will Brown Join the “Denier” Club?  

AB 296 will now be forwarded to California’s most environmentally activist governor for signature.  This is ironic because AB 296 has no known basis in accepted atmospheric science and would result in greater warming and air pollution.  The resulting greater air pollution would be hard to deny as an unanticipated consequence because it is certainly foreseeable.

Repeatedly, Brown has declared that science is on his side in the contentious debate over global warming.  Recently, he has called global warming skeptics “deniers” of accepted science.  But accepted atmospheric science about how inversion layers create urban air pollution does not support the Democratic Party’s legislation for cool pavements.  In fact, cooler road pavement will result in the reverse effect — greater global and local warming.

Brown has painted himself into a corner of a hot paved road with a diesel truck headed in his direction with his “denier” rhetoric about global warming skeptics.  If Brown approves AB 296, he will join the ranks of those “global warming deniers.”