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Extreme Climate Survey
Science News is collecting reader questions about how to navigate our planet’s changing climate.
What do you want to know about extreme heat and how it can lead to extreme weather events?
Most “radiative cooling” designs involve roofs designed to take in and then emit the sun’s energy at infrared wavelengths that radiate through Earth’s atmosphere and into space. Such roofs can be bedecked with plants, painted white to better reflect sunlight, or coated in materials that are both highly reflective and highly emissive (SN: 2/6/23).
Vertical walls are trickier to cool, says materials scientist Yuan Yang of Columbia University. That’s because they don’t just face out toward space, but simultaneously absorb heat from the ground. An efficient radiative cooling design must account for both effects.
Hence: zigzag walls. Yang’s team hypothesized that by corrugating the vertical surface and coating the facets with different materials — more reflective materials facing downward and more emissive materials facing upward — the wall could absorb less heat than a conventional straight wall.
Simulations comparing how much heat conventional and zigzag walls gained from the ground during a hot day supported that hypothesis. The average difference in wall temperature was about 2.3 degrees, a difference that rose to 3.1 degrees during the hottest part of the day. The team found a similar difference when they tested a miniature backyard version of their design in summer 2022 in New Jersey.
How zigzags affected a wall’s temperature
Researchers tested a small-scale version of their zigzag wall design during New Jersey’s summer heat, and tracked changes in ground, air and wall temperatures. As ground (black) temperatures rose, they found, the corrugated walls (red) stayed cooler than conventional flat walls (orange).Cheng et al/Nexus 2024Researchers tested a small-scale version of their zigzag wall design during New Jersey’s summer heat, and tracked changes in ground, air and wall temperatures. As ground (black) temperatures rose, they found, the corrugated walls (red) stayed cooler than conventional flat walls (orange).Cheng et al/Nexus 2024
The goal was to design something that would be commercially appealing, Yang says. Corrugated walls already exist, he notes, and the design is easy to manufacture and scale up, perhaps finding a way for consumers to zig when the climate zags.
