Increased heat stress and sea-level rise, associated with climate change could threaten the viability of some cities by the latter part of this century. This paper reviews urban development patterns in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, and concludes these cities are highly vulnerable to elevated wet-bulb temperatures and sea level rise. This is predominantly due to the focus of development along the Gulf coastline, where these issues are concentrated. In response, this paper ventures regional planning responses to adapt to these threats through decentralising populations to inland areas.

As coastal communities all over the world deal with the consequences of rising sea-level and more intense storm events, planners and managers continue to grapple with the optimal policy approach to managing increasing risks to coastal ecosystems, people and property. In this article, we describe a flexible pathway approach to adaptation derived in south west Australia for local government. While the issue is usually addressed using a conventional option analysis of the ‘retreat-accommodate-protect’ alternatives within a given timeframe (often until 2100), we argue that this approach is misleading in that it obfuscates the long term realities of climate change. Sea-level will be rising for hundreds if not thousands of years, meaning that retreat is ultimately inevitable for any coastlines currently determined to be vulnerable – the only uncertainty is when this will be necessary. Accordingly the focus should be on continual monitoring, updated hazard mapping, and the identification of sequential triggers that regulate land uses. We propose this simplified flexible pathway as a rational approach to dealing with the temporal uncertainty of future climate change that should be widely adopted.

There is increasing interest in the role of parks as potential cool refuges in the age of climate change. Such potential refuges result from the Park Cool Island (PCI) effect, reflecting the temperature differential between the park and surrounding urban areas. However, this study of different park typologies in Perth, Australia, illustrates that while surface temperatures are 10–15 °C lower in parks during summer afternoons (much less than at other times), air temperatures are generally no different from the adjacent streetscape for the smaller parks. Only the largest park in the study had 1–2 °C lower morning and mid-afternoon air temperature differentials. The study illustrates that while the PCI is a real phenomenon, the magnitude in terms of air temperature is small, and it is of less relevance to the conditions felt by humans in average summer daytime conditions than the direct effects of solar radiation. Many studies have assessed the PCI effect, an indicator that has shown a wide range across different studies and measurement techniques. However, this novel paper utilises satellite remote-sensed land surface temperatures, on-ground measurements of surface temperatures, air temperatures, and humidity, as well as modelling using the microclimatic simulation software ENVI-met version 5.0. A reliance on land surface temperature, which in isolation has a marginal correlation with human experience of thermal comfort, has led some researchers to overstate the PCI effect and its influence on adjoining urban areas. The research reported in this paper illustrates that it is the shade provided by the canopy in parks, rather than parks themselves, that provides meaningful thermal comfort benefits. Accordingly, adaptation to increasing temperatures requires the creation of a continuous canopy, ideally over parks, streetscapes, and private lots in an interconnected network.

Heat stress, resulting from elevated heat and absolute humidity associated with climate change, will increasingly occur in the tropics and parts of the mid-latitudes and could threaten the liveability and viability of many regions. Concomitant with predictions of increased heat stress in northern Australia, the Australian Government seeks to boost the population in northern Australia substantially. This paper assesses the heat stress-related wet-bulb temperatures the largest northern centres could experience under Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 and 8.5 by 2080. The paper finds that substantial population growth could place significant future urban populations at risk from heat stress-related health issues.