Roof gardens to have their time in the sun
IT WAS as if the sun had never set the night before.
When first light crept above the horizon at 5.42 on Tuesday morning, the temperature was still 32.8 degrees, and most of Melbourne had sweated through an unbearably hot night.
Australians might be accustomed to hot summer days, but the mood in Melbourne on Tuesday suggested we are less resilient when it comes to stifling nights. ''Think how poor the productivity of Melbourne would have been on Tuesday after nobody slept the night before,'' says Professor Nigel Tapper, an environmental scientist from Monash University.
But while modern minds inevitably think of climate change during such heatwaves, there are also other forces at play.
[Source: The Age, January 16, 2010]