Fieldston Green Roof Research Station
Click here for live data logged from two Fieldston rooftops is displayed against a snapshot of the actual upper green roof at Fieldston Middle School.
What does the data show?
The instrumentation and setups were selected to give hard data on the two most fundamental processes happening everywhere on the surface of the Earth. These two processes are known to scientists as “surface energy balance” and “surface water balances.”
The source of all energy driving the atmosphere, enabling photosynthesis, and creating our local climate is solar energy from the sun. The source of all surface water enabling life and also defining our local climate is from rainfall, snow, frost, dew, fog, etc. from the atmosphere. One of the first principles of science is that energy and (to a high degree) water is “conserved” at the surface, so that each unit of energy or water input into a given surface exactly balances changes in outflows and/or storage. The data being collected on these two roofs will allow students and researchers to write and ‘solve’ energy and water balance equations to understand the various flows and how our built urban surfaces affects our local environment.
What is the scientific purpose of the project?
As global warming unfolds ever more rapidly over the next few decades, two ubiquitous urban problems are receiving more and more attention because they will only get worse with climate change: (1) excess urban heat conditions and (2) excess urban stormwater runoff conditions. Both these effects are a direct result of the particular land use decisions we make when we build cities, using a preponderance of dark, dense, impervious surfaces, among other choices. For the New York area, rapidly increasing temperatures and increases in rainfall are expected as a result of global warming so, in a sense, the last thing our city needs is extra heat production and runoff from direct urban design.
Green roofs are probably the most powerful urban mitigation option there is to both reduce excess heat and runoff from building facades. The potential surface area available for green roof adoption has been estimated by some as 10 or more times the land area of Central Park. For example, in the dashboard one can see even in winter on sunny days the extremely high temperatures on the black roof as compared to the green roof. Also of key interest is the “soil moisture” data converted into gallons of precipitable water present at any moment on the roof. This is water that would otherwise have run into the combined sewer system, especially during rainfall events, and lead to sanitary water overflows into the harbor and estuary. The data being collected at the Fieldston research station will be of great interest to City officials who are currently studying the various mitigation options available for urban heat island and urban runoff island reduction.
Stuart Gaffin, an atmospheric physicist and research scientist at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University, is leading the Fieldston Green Roof Research Station.
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