- Physics world. - Hello and welcome to the
Physics World Weekly Podcast. I'm Hamish Johnston. Addressing important environmental
challenges like climate change while improving
human wellbeing is a growing theme in urban development worldwide. To chat about how this can
be achieved, I'm joined by Ika Kla, who is an urban climatologist. She's based at the Oxford
Smith School of Enterprise and the environment at the
UK's University of Oxford. And she's also the new editor
in chief of the Journal, environmental Research Ladders. Ika joins me down the line from Oxford. Welcome to the podcast. And to start things off, can you tell us a bit about
the field of urban climatology and the research that you do at Oxford? - Yeah. So urban
climatology is a, is a study of urban climate and it examines the interactions between the natural environment and the built environment
within urban spaces. So the work that I did many
years ago was looking at these interactions, particularly
with the built environment and now how heat gets transferred from outside the built
environment into indoor built environments, starting with
the city of Chicago, um, which is a very dense urban space. And this work has, has gained a lot of traction over the years
as extreme heat rises around the world. My work has also evolved, uh, to ask a more broad question, a question that is quite fundamental
in our time, which is how can societies improve human
wellbeing while preserving and enhancing the environment? So this is examining this
question of, you know, how when we have productive tensions between energy consumption in cities, because cities are sites where we bring together
infrastructure and people and therefore have high energy demand. And often cities are also
sites of transitions. One of the largest trends
globally is that of urbanization. More than 80% of the world is going to be living in cities in a few decades, and cities are also sites of climate change impacts
and opportunities. So examine these, these
interactions and tensions and opportunities between
energy consumption, urban transitions, and
climate change in the context of development is where
my work lies today. - You're currently involved
with Oxford's Future of Cooling program, which looks at how we can keep people
cool as the earth warms, what are the main challenges
when it comes to, to cooling? - So I think cooling is a very exciting and understudied issue globally. It's been quite a blind spot
in our sustainability debates and it's sort of crept up
upon us in the last few years. In particular of all
climate change impacts, extreme heat kills more than any other. So it is in what we call a silent killer. 'cause you often don't see the destruction that extreme heat provides. And the response to extreme
heat is to be able to cool and to keep ourselves
thermally comfortable. But the, the challenge
in many ways is that our go-to solution for cooling, which is the standard
air conditioner, is one that actually exacerbates the
same problem that it's trying to solve because it is
often, uh, you know, sort of relying on a highly
fossil fuel based grid. It's a very energy consuming, highly energy consuming device, and it uses refrigerant gases and um, and releases carbon
emissions from the grid that further exacerbate global warming and then provide more extreme heat that we need further cooling from. So our work in general is to
be able to both understand and shape the future trajectory
of global cooling demand. Um, an interesting
statistic from the IEA is that 10 new air conditioners
will be bought every second for the next 30 years globally. And the energy demand
from cooling at the end of this century is going to be much larger than that from heating. So there is a sort of inflection point that we're in the midst of. Um, but what that means is that
there are huge opportunities to shift the system of cooling and how we provide resilience from and to extreme heat globally, particularly to vulnerable populations. And our work examines both the social and the technical
dimensions of doing this. - So does that mean that you
are, you're looking at, um, you know, for example, passive or more passive techniques of, of cooling buildings rather than the sort of con conventional compressed
refrigeration systems? - Yes, very much so. Passive
cooling techniques are really at the heart of how we can
provide sustainable cooling across countries,
cultures and communities. Um, but their provision at
scale is not straightforward. So we are looking at ways and
means to be able to do that. We also examine other
alternative technologies and also examine how the standard vapor
compression based air conditioner can be made more efficient through higher energy
efficiency standards. Uh, that's the technical side. There's also a lot of work
that we do on the policy side, examining and working, for instance, uh, with the UK Environment Audit
Committee on understanding how the UK can build
a heat resilience plan for its communities and
vulnerable populations. Uh, but then there are also
many other dimensions to this, including the links with behaviors and cultures with business models, um, and with infrastructure
development as a whole - And, and on cooling. I mean, one, one of the, uh, I suppose one of the big trends in the
United States, for example, over the past 40 or 50 years
is, is, you know, the growth of of, of the southern states
where previously, uh, you know, it was just too hot to, you know, I suppose have a comfortable
life in a place like Houston or Atlanta or Phoenix. But now there's millions of
people living there, um, thanks to air conditioning. And of course that's, that's
resulting in huge, um, carbon emissions. Did, I mean, will, will countries have to start thinking about where people live and maybe saying, well, we we shouldn't be encouraging people to live in a place like Phoenix because that's going
to cause uh, you know, it's just gonna cost too much energy and it it's not gonna be viable. - Yeah, I think qua you, the
founder of modern Singapore, said it best when he
said that civilization was made possible in the tropics because of air conditioning. And um, you know, that's very
much the, the same rationale behind these entire
belts in the Middle East, in the southern states of the
United States, which are very, very hot regions where we
have thriving communities because of air conditioning. But like you are saying, these are also hotspots in many ways where
as global temperatures rise, particularly as we move
towards a 1.5, uh, you know, degree world and, and possibly a world that
is even warmer than that, the level of extreme heat
in terms of its intensity, duration and frequency
is just going to rise. So we did some work which was published and gained quite a lot of
traction last year, which showed that if the world warms from 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels to
two degrees, then the largest relative increase, or the
largest absolute increase first from cooling degree days,
which is an indicator of extreme heat, um, happens
in countries in Africa. So, you know, the top 10
countries are all in Africa where you're going to see the
largest absolute increase, but the largest relative
increase from a 1.5 to a two degree world, uh,
in cooling degree days, is actually countries in Northern Europe. So the uk, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway. And these are places
that are traditionally unprepared for heat. So it's not just these warmer
climates that we, you know, where we expect these kinds of changes. It's actually a number of cooler climates which have
not traditionally grappled with these issues at all,
uh, that are going to have to very quickly learn to
adapt and build resilience. - And, uh, you're also a
research director at the Oxford India Center for Sustainable Development, which currently has 21 scholars from India working in Oxford. Can you talk a bit about the
research that they're doing? - Yes. So the Oxford India Center for Sustainable Development
is, um, one of the few centers around the world actually, which focuses on contemporary India and its sustainable development opportunities and challenges. Uh, India is very, it's, it's, it's very instructive in many ways because it is where the largest urban
transition in history is happening, uh, at the moment. Um, and it is, you know,
sort of full of opportunities and challenges in terms of how we move forward towards sustainability for energy and climate change. But a number of other issues. So the, the center focuses on
these contemporary problems. It takes an interdisciplinary view, not privileging one
discipline over the other. So, you know, there is
work that takes place at one end from antibiotic resistance, uh, to the development of photo vol take cells to the electric vehicle
transition in India to the preservation of
biodiversity in different natural habitats, um, and to the use of law and regulation in, in, in
managing these transitions. So it's a, it's, it's a very
diverse and rich and, and and vibrant place where we're
trying to build the linkages between these multiple,
both sort of, you know, the multiple transitions that are taking place in the country, the multiple opportunities that come out of these transitions, but also
the challenges, particularly those that come from, you
know, being in the context of development and having the sort of state capacity that the country does. - So you're also a research
associate at Oxford's Zero Institute. What, what are the aims of that institute? - So zero, uh, the Zero
Institute, which stands for Zero Carbon Energy
Research, Oxford is a new and exciting institute and initiative that has
been set up strategically by the University of Oxford. And its primary motivation is to get the zero carbon
energy system, right. The reason for this is that
over 70% of greenhouse gases that are responsible for global warming come
from the conversion and the use of energy. So we recognize that there's no way to make the transition
towards the net zero goals that many countries have. And that, and, and the, the
overall global net zero goal that we need to achieve for, uh, addressing climate change
without taking a very hard look and, and finding solutions
to the energy system. And so this institute
really brings together all the thinking in Oxford in
terms of how do we transition to a zero carbon energy system to establish a stable climate. So it is multidisciplinary,
it examines questions such as energy demand, which have
traditionally been quite, um, sort of ignored in the,
in the energy discourse 'cause we've had a focus
on supply for a long time. And, um, but here we, you know, we really focus on both demand and supply, but also conversion and
storage and distribution and both the sociotechnical
links that are required to be able to make these
transitions, including the links to other sustainable development goals and the links to achieving a
net zero goal more broadly. But it's, you know, it's,
it's remit as such is to focus on the energy question and to say, how do we tackle
all sectors that contribute to energy across scope one,
two, and three emissions. - And you've also just taken
over as the new editor in chief of the Journal Environmental
Research Letters. What are your plans for the journal? - Yes, it's really a privilege to be able to be in this position and, uh, to follow the big
footsteps of Dan who was, uh, in this role for so many years before me. And part of the plan
in some sense is to, is to continue all the work that the journal has already been doing. And, you know, the, the,
the flagship publication that it produces that,
uh, I've been reading for so many years now, there are
three things in particular that I am interested in focusing on. The first is to build
greater collaboration between the physical,
natural, and social sciences. Um, and this stems out
of my own approach to research problems and to climate change and energy questions in particular,
which is that, you know, we can no longer take
a purely disciplinary lens to these issues. Interdisciplinarity is
really important, uh, but doing interdisciplinarity
in a way that honors the depth of different disciplines
is, is really key. So to build research that
allows for that kind of depth and breadth across disciplinary
spaces in the physical sciences and the natural sciences and in the social sciences, but keeping justice also
at the core of these issues is going to be really important. A second issue is to focus on creating new and stronger networks
with authors, researchers, institutions and communities
in the global south, and really encourage work from countries that are not often represented
in our research landscape, and particularly countries
that are in the midst of so many multiple transitions
that hold the key to both lessons and opportunities for how we make these shifts
in our global climate and in our environmental
systems more broadly. And then the third is
to be able to support and champion early career
researchers who again, often don't have spaces to be able to put their work forward, um, but to be able to give them a space and, and to be able to also provide
them with ways and means and approaches to be able to enhance and take their for work
forward to the next level. - Well that, that sounds like
a great plan for the journal. And I should say that
Environmental Research Letters is published by Institute
of Physics Publishing, which also brings you physics world and uh, you can find it on
the IOP Science website. Uh, thanks so much for
coming on the podcast. - Thank you so much. It's
wonderful to talk with you. - I'm afraid that's all the time we have for this week's podcast. Thanks to Ika Kla for joining me today. And a special thanks to
our producer Fred Isles. We'll be back again next week, but in the meantime, do
check out the latest episode of the Physics World Stories podcast host Andrew Gluster looks at
theories of modified gravity, which seek to explain
the large scale structure of the universe without
the need for dark matter. His guests are modified
Gravity Advocate Stacey Maga of the Case, Western
Reserve University in the US and Dark Matter enthusiast Indra
Nell Bannock, who is at the UK's University of St. Andrews. That episode
is called Dark Matter versus Modified Gravity. Which team are you on? And you can find it on
the Physics world website or at your favorite podcast provider - Physics World.