Year 13 Gain First-Hand Insight from Dr Sun Ting on Urban Climate Hazards

Year 13 Geography students recently had the privilege of hosting Dr. Sun Ting, Associate Professor in Climate and Meteorological Hazard Risks at UCL, whose pioneering work in urban climate modelling offers crucial insights for our A-Level topics on Water and Carbon Cycles.

Dr. Sun’s research focuses on the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, highlighting not only its intensity but also its persistence, demonstrating how materials like concrete and pavement hold heat and how we need to create solutions to create heat resilience.

Dr. Sun is a lead developer of the open-source urban climate model SuPy. This academic theory is put directly into action through UCL’s collaborative City Modelling Lab with the global engineering firm Arup. Arup’s UHeat tool uses this advanced modelling to pinpoint neighbourhood hotspots and guide evidence- based policy. This sophisticated, multi-scale analysis is vital, as temperatures can vary significantly even within the city centre due to localised factors.

Here's an article with more information.

We thank Dr. Sun, who came all the way from Reading to talk to us - despite having technological difficulties and a fire drill - it was really interesting hearing about the complexities of urban heat and the challenges of tackling this issue.