Environmental planning for the 2002 Olympic games, strategies to reduce ozone levels, focused tree-planting programs, and identification of cool roofs are early spinoffs from a NASA urban study just concluding in three U.S. cities.
Researchers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, flew a thermal camera mounted on a NASA aircraft over Baton Rouge, LA; Sacramento, CA; and Salt Lake City, UT. The thermal camera took each city's temperature and produced an image that pinpoints the cities' "hot spots."
The researchers are using the images to study which city surfaces contribute to bubble-like accumulations of hot air, called urban heat islands. The bubbles of hot air develop over cities as naturally vegetated surfaces are replaced with asphalt, concrete, rooftops, and other man-made materials.
Salt Lake City is using the early results to help plan sites for the 2002 Olympic Games and develop strategies to reduce ground-level ozone concentrations in the Salt Lake City valley. Though at high altitudes ozone protects the Earth from ultraviolet rays, at ground level it is a powerful and dangerous respiratory irritant found in cities during the summer's hottest months.
In Sacramento and Baton Rouge, city planners and tree-planting organizations are using the study to focus their tree-planting programs.
The science team will continue to analyze the thermal heat information and work with the cities to incorporate future results into the cities' plans. The team plans to disseminate its findings nationally so other cities can incorporate what the team has learned into their long-range growth plans.