URBAN CLIMATOLOGICAL STUDIES
Interim rept. no. 1
STANFORD RESEARCH INST MENLO PARK CA
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The report describes portable automobile-mounted, recording, temperature measurement systems using ventilated radiation-shielded thermistor elements to measure wet and dry bulb temperatures at heights of 0.3 and 2 meters with an accuracy of about plus or minus 0.25C. The units were used on two vehicles to survey horizontal temperature fields in San Jose, Calif. Albuquerque, N.M. and New Orleans, La., during the summer of 1966. About three weeks were spent in each city, covering areas from the citys center to its edge. Chart records of temperature were transferred to punched cards and processed. They were interpolated to common hours and averaged for about 50 selected locations in each city. The averages are in a relative form, where each of the 18 to 20 thousand individual temperatures had subtracted from it that days noon airport temperature. Relative wet-bulb temperature fields are also presented. Daytime results are stressed. Preliminary analyses indicate that the effect of built-up areas, as distinct from other influences, is to raise the temperature by about 12C during the day. Shaded or grassy spaces are about 12C cooler than their unshaded surroundings.