Temperature Disparity Comparisons for Campus Heat Vulnerabilities

For the past several decades, planet Earth has experienced the detrimental effects of climate change like heightened temperatures, extreme weather, and wildlife loss, and to this day, still continues to experience these consequences. Because of this, people at various levels of society – global, country, state, city, community – need to prepare the next steps forward regarding how to live and build in this new and changing environment. In order to prepare, it becomes vital to learn and measure what and how the current ecosystem and landscape are reacting to climate change both for human comfort as well as more efficient energy usage. In this research, climate modules were built and distributed across MIT’s campus to measure air tem- perature, ground temperature, humidity, pressure, and light every three minutes over 24 hours. The campus temperatures were compared with established temperature measurements around the surrounding Cambridge city area as well as Boston Logan airport gathered by Weather Underground. Areas on MIT’s campus measured com- parable average temperatures throughout the 24 hour measurement intervals with the temperatures measured by Weather Underground, but recorded higher maximum temperatures experienced in the day. Within MIT’s campus, the climate modules also recorded varying temperatures, signaling that MIT’s campus does not have a holistic temperature, but rather disparate temperature readings depending on the surrounding area and materials. As a result, this research informs MIT’s future deci- sions on possibly energy allocation among existing buildings as well as planning for subsequent construction of new structures.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Futami, Lauren

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Wallace, David R.

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright MIT

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/147350

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/147350