Comment by inferiorhuman
6 months ago
the Pilbara easily matches Arizona temperatures
That's a bit apples to oranges. Pilbara is sparsely populated, Arizona's had much larger urban centers since the 70s. Karratha (the largest city in Pilbara) has a population of about 17,000. Phoenix? About 1.6 million. Phoenix also sees hotter summers with daily average max temps around 45 versus 35 or lower for Karratha. A couple years ago Phoenix saw daily highs of over 43 for a month straight.
Arizona also famously prohibits collecting rain water. It's an unforgiving environment, and while there were people who lived there in pre-Columbian times they didn't do so in large cities.
Awww, look at you comparing temps on the cool coastal fringes of the Pilbara.
The interior gets hotter, Marble Bar for example.
> Pilbara is sparsely populated, Arizona's had much larger urban centers since the 70s
I fail to see how this is relevant to the design of individual buildings and the choices regarding passive Vs active cooling.
> A couple years ago Phoenix saw daily highs of over 43 for a month straight.
That occurs roughly every five years or so in interior (not coastal) Pilbara locations.
This year a W.Australian wheatbelt town much further south (cooler, and not in the Pilbara) saw a month of ~ 40 temperatures peaking at 45 .. a month of over 40 in the interior is expected yearly.
> It's an unforgiving environment, and while there were people who lived there in pre-Columbian times they didn't do so in large cities.
Much like the Pilbara, save for the "pre-Columbian" marker - before European colonization people lived in all parts of Australia, including the Pilbara, the Tanimi, and other desert regions, for tens of thousands of years.