Effects of green roofs’ variations on the regional thermal environment using measurements and simulations in Chongqing, China

Abstract In the present work, field measurement and simulation method were employed to investigate the effects of several green roofs variables on regional thermal environment in Chongqing (29°N, 106°E), China. Field experiments were conducted in two typical places. The real influence of green roofs on ambient environment was analyzed and compared with the simulation results. The software ENVI-met was employed to simulate 29 cases with different factors, including green roofs types, vegetation coverage, building height, arrangement position and regional layouts. With the aim to investigate the effect of the green roofs thoroughly, different design factors of green roofs were taken in consideration. From the aspect of cooling effect, it can be found that enclosing layout has the maximum air temperature drop, which is up to 0.5 °C. From the perspective of the uniformity of regional environmental temperature distribution, the regional thermal environment of scattered layout is better than enclosing and array layout as a whole. In addition, with the same vegetation coverage, the effectiveness of air temperature dropping of the whole region differed according to the arrangement position. Centrally arranging the green roofs upwind can effectively reduce the air temperature of the whole region. These findings can be used to improve the regional thermal environment by designing the green roofs reasonably.