As our climate changes through time there is an ever-increasing need to
quantify how and where it is changing so that mitigation strategies can be
implemented. Urban areas have a disproportionate amount of warming due, in
part, to the conductive properties of concrete and asphalt surfaces, surface
albedo, heat capacity, lack of water, etc. that make up an urban environment.
The NASA Climate Adaptation Science Investigation working group at Goddard
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, conducted a study to collect temperature
and humidity data at 15 min intervals from 12 sites at the center. These sites
represent the major surface types at the center: asphalt, building roof, grass
field, forest, and rain garden. The data show a strong distinction in the
thermal properties of these surfaces at the center and the difference between
the average values for the center compared to a local meteorological station.
The data have been submitted to Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed
Active Archive Center (ORNL-DAAC) for archival in comma separated value (csv)
file format (Carroll et al., 2016) and can be found by following this link:
http://daac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/dsviewer.pl?ds_id=1319.