Passive radiative cooling materials for extreme weather: mechanisms, design strategies, and application advances

Passive radiative cooling has emerged as a promising zero-energy thermal management strategy for reducing cooling demand under increasingly severe climate conditions. This review critically examines radiative cooling materials for extreme-weather environments, where practical performance is constrained by atmospheric humidity, dust and soiling, ultraviolet aging, moisture ingress, and seasonal overcooling. Reported benchmark systems now reach solar reflectance of approximately 0.95-0.98, mid-infrared emittance of approximately 0.90-0.96, daytime sub-ambient temperature drops of about 4.5-4.9 °C, and net cooling powers of about 93-117 W m^-2 under favorable clear-sky conditions. However, field data show that hot-humid climates can suppress or eliminate true sub-ambient cooling, shifting the practical benefit toward reduced heat gain rather than idealized temperature depression. We therefore organize the field around three linked questions: how optical mechanisms define the theoretical cooling limit, how scalable polymer and particle architectures trade spectral performance against manufacturability, and how durability, soiling, and adaptive operation determine outdoor service life. By connecting photonic design, polymer chemistry, field performance, and deployment barriers, this review identifies the material families and research gaps most relevant to building-scale and climate-resilient cooling.