Heat in Urban Asia

Asian cities are getting hotter. This is partly a global problem, resulting from anthropogenic climate change, and partly a local problem, caused by the excessive use of concrete and energy intensive technologies. This website presents data, maps, stories, and images that help us to examine the past, present, and future of heat in urban Asia.

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Selected Articles

Temperature Changes in Urban Asia: The Cases of Singapore, Hong Kong, and Seoul

By Yoonhee Jung

The world’s temperature is going up globally. Human-induced warming reached approximately 1°C (likely between 0.65°C and 1.06°C) over the period 1880 to 2012...

Escaping the Heat of the City in China

By Chris Courtney

A construction boom is underway in the mountains of western Hubei. The mountainous forests of Shennongjia 神农架 are one of the least developed regions of China...

Introduction of Air Conditioning into Singapore

By Fiona Williamson

Singapore adopted air-conditioning in the 1930s. The first supplier was the ‘Carrier Air Conditioning Company of America’ who had moved into supplying Asian markets in 1930...

Heat and the Body in Biomedicine and Ayurveda

By Ashawari Chaudhuri

In most Asian cities, biomedicine is practiced alongside traditional forms of medicine like Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, Korean Medicine, and Sowa Rigpa. The relation between heat and the body is different in biomedicine from most of these traditional forms of knowledge.