Meet the New Yorkers Mapping the City's Heat Islands
Scientific American
By: Chelsea Harvey
At 3 p.m., New York City is typically approaching its hottest time of the day. The city’s been steeping in late-afternoon sun for hours, heat building up between the densely packed buildings and lingering over the concrete sidewalks. The hum of window air conditioners hangs in the heavy air.
As temperatures climbed toward their peak on a sunny Saturday afternoon last month, Martin Stute and Aboud Ezzeddine were criss-crossing upper Manhattan from the air-conditioned comfort of Stute’s Kia Niro. Affixed to the passenger-side window, a small sensor was recording the outside temperature and humidity in real time as they zipped through the city streets.
Stute and Ezzeddine—an environmental science professor at Barnard College and a master’s student in public health at the City University of New York, respectively—were completing their second shift of the day as volunteers with a special urban heat-mapping project. A collaboration between nonprofit organization South Bronx Unite and Columbia University’s Earth Institute, sponsored by NOAA, the project aims to pinpoint which neighborhoods are hotter than others—and why.
