Measuring Temperature Sensor Data in Massachusetts Gateway Cities

Urban areas experience higher temperatures than surrounding non-urban areas due to substantial differences in land-cover, especially impervious surfaces. The presence of an urban tree canopy can regulate and counteract these elevated land surface temperatures, thus reducing energy usage especially during summer peak energy load periods. The Greening the Gateway Cities (GGC) Program, created by the MA Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, is designed to reduce household heating and cooling energy use by increasing tree canopy cover in urban residential areas. This project will collect and analyze daily-monthly-annual air temperature and humidity data from a network of HOBO weather stations in three GGC cities to assess differences among tree planting zones. Additionally, the project will employ a three-dimensional microclimate model (ENVI-met), calibrated using the HOBO data, to simulate the impact of tree planting on microclimate using four different scenarios: (1) no new tree cover; (2) current GGC tree cover; (3) idealized GGC tree cover (i.e., trees in all available open spaces); and (4) micro-climate conditions under future climate.