The use of green infrastructure and irrigation in the mitigation of urban heat in a desert city

Severe urban heat, a prevalent climate change consequence, endangers city residents globally. Vegetation-based mitigation strategies are commonly employed to address this issue. However, the Middle East and North Africa are under investigated in terms of heat mitigation, despite being one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change. This study assesses the feasibility and climatic implications of wide-scale implementation of green infrastructure (GI) for heat mitigation in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia—a representative desert city characterized by low vegetation coverage, severe summer heat, and drought. Weather research forecasting model (WRF) is used to simulate GI cooling measures in Riyadh’s summer condition, including measures of increasing vegetation coverage up to 60%, considering irrigation and vegetation types (tall/short). In Riyadh, without irrigation, increasing GI fails to cool the city and can even lead to warming (0.1 to 0.3 °C). Despite irrigation, Riyadh’s overall GI cooling effect is 50% lower than GI cooling expectations based on literature meta-analyses, in terms of average peak hour temperature reduction. The study highlights that increased irrigation substantially raises the rate of direct soil evaporation, reducing the proportion of irrigation water used for transpiration and thus diminishing efficiency. Concurrently, water resource management must be tailored to these specific considerations.