The Urban Heat Island Effect Intensive Observation Period (IOP) has started. The weather in the Northern Hemisphere has started to get warmer as meteorological spring started March 1. There was an amazing weather situation where I live this past Saturday. You can see in the images on the left that I drove about 20 miles (32 km) from my house in Michigan to the Oak Openings Park in Ohio. There is a warm front stalled across the area.
It was near 40 F (6 C) near my house but in the upper 60s (20 C) at the park. You can see in the right image that there was a warm front between my house and the park. The front did not move much from when I got to the park and left about 45 minutes later.
The weather and temperature can be amazing. As everyone keeps observing air temperature, surface temperature and clouds for the Urban Heat Island/Surface Temperature IOP, I wanted to remind everyone that we have been focusing on grass versus artificial turf on sports fields. I am working with Vasco Mantas of the University of Coimbra in Portugal and George Xian from USGS EROS Data Center in South Dakota to link the GLOBE UHIE campaign to their research study on the impacts of artificial turf and temperature. I have been working with my students at the University of Toledo in my three classes of Weather and Climate, Remote Sensing and Geospatial Technology to take surface temperature and air temperature observations on campus and also around Toledo creating a dense observation concentrations in Toledo, Ohio.
Dr. Farrokh Namjooyan is a researcher working with me at the University of Toledo. She put together the following data for the Urban Heat Island Effect IOP.
I wanted thank everyone who has taken observations this observation year so far. There have been 4,655 surface temperature observation around the world. 117 schools have taken participated in the surface temperature observations while 523 schools have taken air temperature observations with many of the schools having automated weather stations.
Here is some data from Ohio averaging all of the schools that took surface and air temperature for October through December 2021. What do you see in the data? Which is warmer on average, air temperature or surface temperature?
To me it looks like surface temperature is warmer than air temperature in early fall but then there are more days in December when surface temperature is warmer than air temperature.
I love to ice skate. Each winter I make an ice rink in my backyard. I put out plastic on a frame and fill it with water. Then, the cold weather freezes the water and I have an ice rink. Here I am on the rink holding my hockey stick. I use my infrared thermometer to measure the surface temperature of the surface to see if ice will form. What I find is that, at night especially when there are clear skies, that surface temperature can be colder than air temperature. The air temperature can be above freezing but ice can form.
More analysis shows that asphalt, in general, is warmer than grass. You can look at the data on the GLOBE website and see if data you collect matches this.
Please refer to our webpage for the IOP at:https://sites.google.com/view/uhieforstudents
On this webpage, there are instructions for taking the observations, research projects that students have completed and presented in the past, information about the turf versus grass project and my team.
And, I wanted to thank the schools who have participated by taking surface temperature observations.
