Sacramento School Kids And NASA Technology Find California Capital's Hot Spots

What's hot in Sacramento, California? What's cool?

NASA scientists teamed up with local school kids June 29th to answer these questions – literally –when they took the city's "temperature." The answer ultimately could lead to lower air conditioning costs, improved air quality, and sustainable urban development in Sacramento and other major cities nationwide.

Researchers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., are working with Sacramento school kids, the Environmental Protection Agency, the City of Sacramento, the Sacramento Tree Foundation, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., to study how rapid urbanization has affected climate and air quality in the urban area.

A specially instrumented NASA aircraft flew over the city during the hottest part of the day to produce a thermal map of the area. NASA researchers also launched a weather balloon to measure atmospheric conditions over the city. The techniques and technologies were developed over the last few years in tests over the city of Huntsville by scientists at NASA's Global Hydrology and Climate Center there. As was the case in Sacramento, local schoolchildren's observations provided on-the-ground verification of the data being recorded aboard the aircraft.

Supporting the study on the ground, the school students took temperature readings of different surfaces at their schools in conjunction with the flight. The students' data will be compared with data collected by the aircraft to verify the accuracy of the measurements with those recorded by instruments on the jet.

Once the science team members have collected and analyzed the temperature data, they hope to work with the city to develop an urban planning tool that allows Sacramento to better plan for long-term sustainable development. Sacramento is the second U.S. city to be studied in this manner. Baton Rouge, La., was the first.