Arizona Sun Corridor

The Arizona Sun Corridor, shortened Sun Corridor, is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of Arizona. The Sun Corridor is equivalent to Indiana in both size and population. It is one of the fastest growing conurbations in the country and is speculated to double its population by 2040. The largest metropolitan areas are the Phoenix metropolitan area - Valley of the Sun - and the Tucson metropolitan area. The regions' populace is nestled in the valley of a desert environment. Like Southern California, the urban area extends into Mexico.

Sun Corridor: A Competitive Mindset builds upon the 2008 Megapolitan report by looking at present and future prospects for the Sun Corridor, the economic heart of Arizona stretching along Interstate 10 from Phoenix to Tucson, down Interstate 19 to the Mexican border.

Sun Corridor: A Competitive Mindset builds upon the 2008 Megapolitan report by looking at present and future prospects for the Sun Corridor, the economic heart of Arizona stretching along Interstate 10 from Phoenix to Tucson, down Interstate 19 to the Mexican border.

Efforts characterizing the changing climate of southwestern North America by focusing exclusively on the impacts of increasing levels of long-lived greenhouse gases omit fundamental elements with similar order-of-magnitude impacts as those owing to large-scale climate change1, 2. Using a suite of ensemble-based, multiyear simulations, here we show the intensification of observationally based urban-induced phenomena and demonstrate that the direct summer-time climate effects of the most rapidly expanding megapolitan region in the USA—Arizona’s Sun Corridor.

in the first study to attempt to quantify the impact of rapidly expanding megapolitan areas on regional climate, a team of researchers has established that local maximum summertime warming resulting from projected expansion of the urban Sun Corridor could approach 4 degrees Celsius.