Insights Into Summertime Surface Ozone Formation From Diurnal Variations in Formaldehyde and Nitrogen Dioxide Along a Transect Through New York City
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Madankui Tao↗
SEARCH · Engineering Papers
Results for “cities”
Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
Urban–Rural Contrasts in Central-Eastern European Cities Using a MODIS 4 Micron Time Series
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Monika Tomaszewska↗
A health impact assessment of progress towards urban nature targets in the 96 C40 cities
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Greta K Martin↗
Climate Science for Decision-Making in the New York Metropolitan Region
New York City is one of the world's most vulnerable cities to coastal flooding, due to a high concentration of population and assets near a coastline exposed to warm-season tropical storms and cold -season Nor'easter storms. Among U.S. cities, New York City is second only to New Orleans in population living less than 4 ft above the local high tide. By the 2050s, average annual losses due to coastal flooding alone could exceed $2 billion for the combined New York City-Newark region. Perhaps the most iconic example of a vulnerable New York City asset is the financial district located at the southern tip of Manhattan, however low-lying coastal assets include the full complement of major highways, subways and tunnels, hospitals, schools, wastewater treatment plants, food distribution centers, and people's homes. Given the magnitude of the assets at risk, a compelling case can be made that long-term adaptation makes economic sense for New York City. Given New York's access to economic, human, and technological resources for resilience measures, the City may be able to achieve this resilience. The city's political environment-New York City is a place where climate science is generally not a partisan issue-and the city's experience with uncertainty and overall risk framing (e.g., financing of bond issues for multi-billion dollar infrastructure with multidecade expected lifetimes), encourage climate risk framing.
Horton, Radley↗
On the Impact of Granularity of Space-Based Urban CO2 Emissions in Urban Atmospheric Inversions: A Case Study for Indianapolis, IN
Quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cities is a key challenge towards effective emissions management. An inversion analysis from the INdianapolis FLUX experiment (INFLUX) project, as the first of its kind, has achieved a top-down emission estimate for a single city using CO2 data collected by the dense tower network deployed across the city. However, city-level emission data, used as a priori emissions, are also a key component in the atmospheric inversion framework. Currently, fine-grained emission inventories (EIs) able to resolve GHG city emissions at high spatial resolution, are only available for few major cities across the globe. Following the INFLUX inversion case with a global 1x1 km ODIAC fossil fuel CO2 emission dataset, we further improved the ODIAC emission field and examined its utility as a prior for the city scale inversion. We disaggregated the 1x1 km ODIAC non-point source emissions using geospatial datasets such as the global road network data and satellite-data driven surface imperviousness data to a 3030 m resolution. We assessed the impact of the improved emission field on the inversion result, relative to priors in previous studies (Hestia and ODIAC). The posterior total emission estimate (5.1 MtC/yr) remains statistically similar to the previous estimate with ODIAC (5.3 MtC/yr). However, the distribution of the flux corrections was very close to those of Hestia inversion and the model-observation mismatches were significantly reduced both in forward and inverse runs, even without hourly temporal changes in emissions. EIs reported by cities often do not have estimates of spatial extents. Thus, emission disaggregation is a required step when verifying those reported emissions using atmospheric models. Our approach offers gridded emission estimates for global cities that could serves as a prior for inversion, even without locally reported EIs in a systematic way to support city-level Measuring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) practice implementation.
EIs↗
Urban Expansion and Climate Change: Investigating the Impact of Future Scenarios on Child Health
Cities in the poorest countries of the world are rapidly urbanizing. In fact, some of the fastest growing cities on the planet are found in sub-Saharan Africa. Many people benefit from economic, educational, and health opportunities that exist in cities and, as a result, city-dwellers often face less risk of poverty and disease in the context of climate change than their rural-dwelling counterparts. However, rapid urbanization, resulting from a large and constant influx of migrants from rural areas, can put pressure on existing social, economic, and health systems. For poor cities, they face a challenge to support existing residents while also expanding to support the needs of migrants, many of whom are deeply impoverished. Additionally, in a climate change, linked to heat waves, floods, droughts, and other related events, can add stress to complex urban food, health, hygiene, and housing systems. In this project we investigate urban expansion, climate change, and health in four major African cities – Ouagadougou, Addis Ababa, Nairobi, and Kigali. We consider different scenarios of urban expansion using historic and contemporary maps of urban extent, combined with climate (temperature, rainfall, and vegetation) and land cover combined with spatially referenced health information from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to investigate the relationships between urban dwelling, climate change and health. Temperature and rainfall scenarios are developed under different urban land use futures (expanding agricultural areas versus reducing agricultural areas) to examine the ways that individual health outcomes related to malnutrition vary under different potential future conditions. Preliminary results of the research highlight the importance of temperature for health, in particular, and suggest that while urban conditions related to urban infrastructure (e.g., educational attainment, electricity access, and improved hygiene) cannot reduce health risks to counter the impacts of high temperatures and reduced agricultural land. As cities in poor countries urbanize, city-dwellers face unique risks when droughts, heat waves, and other extreme weather events occur. In this project we explore urban land use conditions, climate conditions and health using future scenarios. Specifically we evaluate health outcomes in the future while considering different land use practices, urban expansion, temperature, and rainfall conditions to identify individual-level risk and protective factors. We compare results across four major cities in sub Saharan Africa.
Public Health↗
High Spatial Resolution Airborne Multispectral Thermal Infrared Remote Sensing Data for Analysis of Urban Landscape Characteristics
We have used airborne multispectral thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing data collected at a high spatial resolution (i.e., 10m) over several cities in the United States to study thermal energy characteristics of the urban landscape. These TIR data provide a unique opportunity to quantify thermal responses from discrete surfaces typical of the urban landscape and to identify both the spatial arrangement and patterns of thermal processes across the city. The information obtained from these data is critical to understanding how urban surfaces drive or force development of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, which exists as a dome of elevated air temperatures that presides over cities in contrast to surrounding non-urbanized areas. The UHI is most pronounced in the summertime where urban surfaces, such as rooftops and pavement, store solar radiation throughout the day, and release this stored energy slowly after sunset creating air temperatures over the city that are in excess of 2-4'C warmer in contrast with non-urban or rural air temperatures. The UHI can also exist as a daytime phenomenon with surface temperatures in downtown areas of cities exceeding 38'C. The implications of the UHI are significant, particularly as an additive source of thermal energy input that exacerbates the overall production of ground level ozone over cities. We have used the Airborne Thermal and Land Applications Sensor (ATLAS), flown onboard a Lear 23 jet aircraft from the NASA Stennis Space Center, to acquire high spatial resolution multispectral TIR data (i.e., 6 bandwidths between 8.2-12.2 (um) over Huntsville, Alabama, Atlanta, Georgia, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Sacramento, California. These TIR data have been used to produce maps and other products, showing the spatial distribution of heating and cooling patterns over these cities to better understand how the morphology of the urban landscape affects development of the UHI. In turn, these data have been used by government officials, urban planners, and other decision-makers, to make more informed decisions on how to mitigate the UHI and its subsequent impacts.
Quattrochi, Dale A.↗
The Urban Heat Island Pilot Project (UHIPP)
Urban heat islands increase the demand for cooling energy and accelerate the formation of smog. They are created when natural vegetation is replaced by heat-absorbing surfaces such as building roofs and walls, parking lots, and streets. Through the implementation of measures designed to mitigate the urban heat island, communities can decrease their demand for energy and effectively "cool" the metropolitan landscape. Measures to reverse the urban heat island include afforestation and the widespread use of highly reflective surfaces. To demonstrate the potential benefits of implementing these measures, EPA has teamed up with NASA and LBNL to initiate a pilot project with three U.S. cities. As part of the pilot, NASA is using remotely-sensed data to quantify surface temperature, albedo, the thermal response number and NDVI vegetation of each city. To pursue these efforts, more information is needed about specific characteristics of several different cities. NASA used the Advanced Thermal and Land Applications Sensor (ATLAS) to obtain high spatial resolution (10 m pixel resolution) over each of the three pilot cities (Baton Rouge, Sacramento, and Salt Lake City). The goal of the UHIPP is to use the results from the NASA/LBNL analysis, combined with knowledge gained through working with various organizations within each pilot city to identify the most effective means of implementing strategies designed to mitigate the urban heat island, These "lessons learned" will be made available and used by cities across the U.S. to assist policy makers and others within various communities to analyze their own urban heat islands and determine which, if any, measures can be taken to help save energy and money, and to prevent pollution. The object of this session is for representatives from each of the pilot cities to present their results of the study and share the experience of working with these data in managing their urban landscape.
Luvall, Jeff↗
Remote Sensing of the Urban Heat Island Effect Across Biomes in the Continental USA
Impervious surface area (ISA) from the Landsat TM-based NLCD 2001 dataset and land surface temperature (LST) from MODIS averaged over three annual cycles (2003-2005) are used in a spatial analysis to assess the urban heat island (UHI) skin temperature amplitude and its relationship to development intensity, size, and ecological setting for 38 of the most populous cities in the continental United States. Development intensity zones based on %ISA are defined for each urban area emanating outward from the urban core to the nonurban rural areas nearby and used to stratify sampling for land surface temperatures and NDVI. Sampling is further constrained by biome and elevation to insure objective intercomparisons between zones and between cities in different biomes permitting the definition of hierarchically ordered zones that are consistent across urban areas in different ecological setting and across scales. We find that ecological context significantly influences the amplitude of summer daytime UHI (urban-rural temperature difference) the largest (8 C average) observed for cities built in biomes dominated by temperate broadleaf and mixed forest. For all cities combined, ISA is the primary driver for increase in temperature explaining 70% of the total variance in LST. On a yearly average, urban areas are substantially warmer than the non-urban fringe by 2.9 C, except for urban areas in biomes with arid and semiarid climates. The average amplitude of the UHI is remarkably asymmetric with a 4.3 C temperature difference in summer and only 1.3 C in winter. In desert environments, the LST's response to ISA presents an uncharacteristic "U-shaped" horizontal gradient decreasing from the urban core to the outskirts of the city and then increasing again in the suburban to the rural zones. UHI's calculated for these cities point to a possible heat sink effect. These observational results show that the urban heat island amplitude both increases with city size and is seasonally asymmetric for a large number of cities across most biomes. The implications are that for urban areas developed within forested ecosystems the summertime UHI can be quite high relative to the wintertime UHI suggesting that the residential energy consumption required for summer cooling is likely to increase with urban growth within those biomes.
Imhoff, Marc L.↗
Remote Sensing of Urban Thermal Landscape Characteristics and Their Affects on Local and Regional Meteorology and Air Quality: An Overview of NASA EOS-IDS Project Atlanta
As an entity, the city is a manifestation of human "management" of the land. The act of city-building, however, drastically alters the biophysical environment, which ultimately, impacts local and regional land-atmosphere energy exchange processes. Because of the complexity of both the urban landscape and the attendant energy fluxes that result from urbanization, remote sensing offers the only real way to synoptically quantify these processes. One of the more important land-atmosphere fluxes that occurs over cities relates to the way that thermal energy is partitioned across the heterogeneous urban landscape. The individual land cover and surface material types that comprise the city, such as pavements and buildings, each have their own thermal energy regimes. As the collective urban landscape, the individual thermal energy responses from specific surfaces come together to form the urban heat island phenomena, which prevails as a dome of elevated air temperatures over cities. Although the urban heat island has been known to exist for well over 150 years, it is not understood how differences in thermal energy responses for land covers across the city interact to produce this phenomenon, or how the variability in thermal energy responses from different surface types drive its development. Additionally, it can be hypothesized that as cities grow in size through time, so do their urban heat islands. The interrelationships between urban sprawl and the respective growth of the urban heat island, however, have not been investigated. Moreover, little is known of the consequential effects of urban growth, land cover change, and the urban heat island as they impact local and regional meteorology and air quality.
Quattrochi, Dale A.↗
The Use of ATLAS Data to Quantify Surface Radiative Budget Alteration Through Urbanization for San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The additional heating of the air over the city is the result of the replacement of naturally vegetated surfaces with those composed of asphalt, concrete, rooftops and other manmade materials. The temperatures of these artificial surfaces can be 20 to 40 0 C higher than vegetated surfaces. Materials such as asphalt store much of the sun s energy and remains hot long after sunset. This produces a dome of elevated air temperatures 5 to 8 C greater over the city, compared to the air temperatures over adjacent rural areas. This effect is called the "urban heat island". Urban landscapes are a complex mixture of vegetated and nonvegetated surfaces. It is difficult to take enough temperature measurements over a large city area to characterize the complexity of urban radiant surface temperature variability. However, the use of remotely sensed thermal data from airborne scanners are ideal for the task. The NASA Airborne Thermal and Land Applications Sensor (ATLAS) operates in the visual and IR bands was used in February 2004 to collect data from San Juan, Puerto Rico with the main objective of investigating the Urban Heat Island (UHI) in tropical cities. In this presentation we will examine the techniques of analyzing remotely sensed data for measuring the effect of various urban surfaces on their contribution to the urban heat island effect. Results from data collected from other US cities of Sacramento, Salt Lake City and Baton Rouge will be used to compare the "urban fabric" among the cities.
Luvall, Jeffrey C.↗
Assessment of Sustainability Development in Urban Areas of Morocco
In Morocco, the last census counted 70% of houses in cities, with seven cities accounting for 25% of the total population and 41% of the urban population. This paper questioned the sustainability indicator in Moroccan cities using a novel methodology based on Earth observations and census data. We estimated the indicator for the 25 largest urban areas between 2003 and 2013. A stratification based on urbanization fractions allowed for the definition and comparison of hierarchically ordered zones consistent across urban areas and scales. We found no systematic pattern of growth between cities. However, three categories of development were identified: a group of large cities with an indicator less than unity and land consumption commensurate to population growth, a group of medium-sized cities trending moderately towards unsustainability with an indicator between one and two, and a group including small cities with significant departure from sustainability. The disparate sustainability levels between urban areas appear to be related to the rapid economic growth, typical of an emerging economy. Our results indicate a continuous population growth pushing outwards the perimeters of existing urban areas. Unless regulated, land consumption is increasing faster than the population in most parts of Morocco, in line with global trends.
Lahouari Bounoua↗
San Diego Urban Development: Utilizing NASA Earth Observations to Identify Drivers of Extreme Urban Heat and Generate a High-Resolution Vulnerability Index for Urban Planning and Climate Resiliency in San Diego, California
Exposure to heat exacerbated by an increase in urbanization as well as increasing global temperatures has become a growing concern for cities and their residents. Excess heat can cause increased heat-related morbidity, mortality, and energy costs. Vulnerability to heat-related illnesses is oftentimes correlated to demographics, socioeconomic status, and pre-existing health conditions. The City of San Diego, California boasts 1.4 million residents and, like many other major cities, has experienced increases in heat-related hospitalizations and mortality. The burden of urban heat is also not equal amongst communities; areas with lower income and communities of color bear a disproportionate burden. In partnership with the City of San Diego, and American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Thriving Earth Exchange, the DEVELOP team used Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS), and ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) imagery to identify areas of highest heat based on land surface temperature from 2015-2020. Our analyses showed that health demographics such as obesity and cardiovascular health were the strongest indicators for heat vulnerability. In addition, various inputs (land use/land cover, tree canopy, and building intensity derived from the City of San Diego data along with albedo from Landsat 8) were used in the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) urban cooling model to investigate changes in cooling rates in current and future scenarios for the city. The model results showed that cooling is expected to occur due to a 5% increase in tree canopy. The City of San Diego can use these results to inform the development of the Climate Resilient San Diego plan and prioritize at-risk communities for cooling interventions.
John Dialesandro↗
Diesel Passenger Vehicle Shares Influenced Covid-19 Changes in Urban Nitrogen Dioxide Pollution
Diesel-powered vehicles emit several times more nitrogen oxides than comparable gasoline-powered vehicles, leading to ambient nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution and adverse health impacts. The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing changes in emissions provide a natural experiment to test whether NO2 reductions have been starker in regions of Europe with larger diesel passenger vehicle shares. Here we use a semi-empirical approach that combines in-situ NO2 observations from urban areas and an atmospheric composition model within a machine learning algorithm to estimate business-as-usual NO2 during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. These estimates account for the moderating influences of meteorology, chemistry, and traffic. Comparing the observed NO2 concentrations against business-as-usual estimates indicates that diesel passenger vehicle shares played a major role in the magnitude of NO2 reductions. European cities with the five largest shares of diesel passenger vehicles experienced NO2 reductions ∼ 2.5 times larger than cities with the five smallest diesel shares. Extending our methods to a cohort of non-European cities reveals that NO2 reductions in these cities were generally smaller than reductions in European cities, which was expected given their small diesel shares. We identify potential factors such as the deterioration of engine controls associated with older diesel vehicles to explain spread in the relationship between cities’ shares of diesel vehicles and changes in NO2 during the pandemic. Our results provide a glimpse of potential NO2 reductions that could accompany future deliberate efforts to phase out or remove passenger vehicles from cities.
Nitrogen Dioxide↗
Remote Sensing and Spatial Growth Modeling Coupled with Air Quality Modeling to Assess the Impact of Atlanta, Georgia on the Local and Regional Environment
The growth of cities, both in population and areal extent, appears as an inexorable process. Urbanization continues at a rapid rate, and it is estimated that by the year 2025, 80 percent of the world s population will live in cities. Directly aligned with the expansion of cities is urban sprawl. Urban expansion has profound impacts on a host of biophysical, environmental, and atmospheric processes. A reduction in air quality over cities is a major result of these impacts. Strategies that can be directly or indirectly implemented to help remediate air quality problems in cities and that can be accepted by political decision makers and the general public are now being explored to help bring down air pollutants and improve air quality. The urban landscape is inherently complex and this complexity is not adequately captured in air quality models, particularly the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model that is used to assess whether urban areas are in attainment of EPA air quality standards, primarily for ground level ozone. This inadequacy of the CMAQ model to sufficiently respond to the heterogeneous nature of the urban landscape can impact how well the model predicts ozone pollutant levels over metropolitan areas and ultimately, whether cities exceed EPA ozone air quality standards. We are exploring the utility of high-resolution remote sensing data and urban spatial growth modeling (SGM) projections as improved inputs to the meteorology component of the CMAQ model focusing on the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area as a case study. These growth projections include "business as usual" and "smart growth" scenarios out to 2030. The growth projections illustrate the effects of employing urban heat island mitigation strategies, such as increasing tree canopy and albedo across the Atlanta metro area, which in turn, are used to model how ozone and air temperature can potentially be moderated as impacts on elevating ground-level ozone, as opposed to not utilizing heat island mitigation strategies. The National Land Cover Dataset at 30m resolution is being used as the land use/land cover input and aggregated to the 4km scale for the MM5 mesoscale meteorological model and the (CMAQ) modeling schemes. Use of these data have been found to better characterize low density/suburban development as compared with USGS 1km land use/land cover data that have traditionally been used in modeling. Air quality prediction for future scenarios to 2030 is being facilitated by land use projections using a spatial growth model. Land use projections were developed using the 2030 Regional Transportation Plan developed by the Atlanta Regional Commission, the regional planning agency for the area. This allows the State Environmental Protection agency to evaluate how these transportation plans will affect future air quality. The coupled SGM and air quality modeling approach provides insight on what the impacts of Atlanta s growth will be on the local and regional environment and exists as a mechanism that can be used by policy makers to make rationale decisions on urban growth and sustainability for the metropolitan area in the future.
Quattrochi, Dale A.↗
New York, USA
New York City, one of the most populous and ethnically diverse cities in the world, has responded to a variety of enviornmental challenges in its history. The most recent is climate change, which is projected to have wide impacts on the city's critical infrastructure and population through higher temperatures, more intense flooding events and sea level rise. The city recognized the risks early and has become a national and international leader in responding to this new challenge, illustrating how this is possible for a large city. As part of a mature urban region, it is an excellent bellwether for the impacts that may be experienced by other cities, especially those in emerging metropolitan conurbations.
Solecki, William↗
Evaluating the Effects of Urban Expansion on Social and Environmental Vulnerability in Guatemala and Panama
Central America is one of the fastest urbanizing regions in the world, with the urban population expected to double by 2050. This growth is driving multiple societal issues, including infrastructure inequities, lack of accessible housing, and environmental degradation. This project partnered with NASA SERVIR, Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana (SICA), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), and Centro de Coordinación para la Prevención de los Desastres en América Central y República Dominicana (CEPRENEDAC) to examine changes in urban extent and vulnerability in Guatemala City, Guatemala and Panama City, Panama. The team identified urban extent using Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), and Landsat 9 OLI-2 within Google Earth Engine’s LandTrendr algorithm. Next, they assessed urban vulnerability between formal and informal settlements by classifying different types of roof material using high-resolution Maxar Worldview 2 and 3 imagery and comparing it to socioeconomic and environmental risks. While both cities have expanded outward and become denser since 2000, Guatemala City has grown at a faster rate. The most vulnerable communities of both cities were located in the northwestern regions. These case studies can be used to inform similar methodologies in other Central American cities and help leaders identify the most vulnerable communities within their areas.
Aaron Whittemore↗
Results of phase one of land use information Delphi study
The Land Use Management Information System (LUMIS) is being developed for the city portion of the Santa Monica mountains. LUMIS incorporates data developed from maps and aerial photos as well as traditional land based data associated with routine city and county record keeping activities and traditional census data. To achieve the merging of natural resource data with governmental data LUMIS is being designed in accordance with restrictions associated with two other land use information systems currently being constructed by Los Angeles city staff. The two city systems are LUPAMS (Land Use Planning and Management System) which is based on data recorded by the County Assessor's office for each individual parcel of land in the city, and Geo-BEDS, a geographically based environmental data system.
Paul, C. K.↗