Geomaticians

Mapping Urban Heat From The Ground Up

Mapping Urban Heat From The Ground Up
Just one year ago, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory assembled a unique mobile observatory for surveying the climate in urban environments. The completely off-the-grid platform maintained by Brookhaven's Center for Multiscale Applied Sensing (CMAS) employs a suite of instruments to measure atmospheric conditions at fixed locations in individual neighborhoods or while moving across entire cities. Now, researchers have taken the mobile observatory on a 1,700-mile journey from Upton, NY, to Houston, TX, where they measured air temperature and relative humidity using a new observational technique. Their work could help improve climate prediction models and address infrastructure and energy needs across the nation.