Many cities are heat islands in summer that are increasingly hot and energy intensive. This fate awaits Nordic high-latitude cities.
We reviewed the literature on city planning and city adaptation. Next we conducted fieldwork in Ulaanbaatar, the world’s coldest capital city in winter, but now intolerably hot in the short summer.
Results: City adaptations such as irrigated planting, air conditioning and refrigeration are helpful but often expensive and unsustainable due to high consumption of energy and water. City architecture is more effective and sustainable by orientating high-rise and small buildings, use of heat-reflecting surfaces, the insertion of shade corridors, large-scale non-irrigated planting and creating of wind funnels. Results suggest ‘cold sinks’ produced by artificial Cold Shields (=naleds, aufeis, taryn, icing) can outperform these alternatives in terms of sustainability, affordability, durability and acceptability in cooling city microclimates in hot summers. Many types of natural and accidental 'cold sinks' exist in Mongolia due to Ice Shields that form in winter and slowly melt in spring and summer, particularly in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar.
Conclusion: Low-cost large-scale ‘cold sinks’ are advocated as being the best means of chilling cities in summer, with very little energy requirements and making a summer-time contribution to global cooling by strong albedo and a sharp reduction in energy consumption. Field trials of natural, accidental and planned ‘cold sinks’ are warranted in Ulaanbaatar, for transfer of know-how to Nordic cities.

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