Rainy weather spoils pilot program to decrease summer heat in Athens

The Athens Municipality launched a pilot program to reduce the heat reflecting from asphalt in the summer months. On Sunday, municipality workers covered the first street with an innovative material called CoolSeal. The program is expected to lower summer temperatures in a city densely constructed with concrete buildings.

The material is similar to paint and deflects the sun-rays hitting the black asphalt.

via @athensmayor

CoolSeal was applied at Voreou Street at the height of Athinas Avenue in the commercial triangle of the Greek capital on Sunday due to the limit car traffic in the area.

During the test phase, measurements will be conducted to check the effectiveness of the material in the real urban environment of the city of Athens.

The project and the measurements are under supervision of the Laboratory of General and Agriculture Meteorology of the Agriculture University of Athens and the Laboratory of  Climatology and Atmospheric Environment of the National University of Athens.

The pilot program foresees that the material will be applied on two more streets.

However, the enthusiasm about the pilot program was spoiled by the rainy weather. The material needs 24 hours to be sealed.

“The weather instability, the rain, has created a problem. We knew it was a risk.” deputy Mayor of Athens, Eleni Myrivili posted on Facebook, stressing that the material needs 24 hours to dry. “We will do a new application once the weather stabilizes,” she added.

Based on deputy mayor post, the risk to apply the CoolSeal despite the  unstable weather was apparently taken by both the company responsible for the material and the municipality authorities.

Greece is the first European country to use the innovative CoolSeal that has been already used with success in Los Angeles, USA.

PS Why did they do it? Everybody was aware of the rainy weather over the weekend. Ask the millions of households that kept their laundry inside….