Las Cruces Urban Heat Island Measurements

A friend and I put a commercial temperature probe on my Trusty Taurus and made numerous profiles of Las Cruces in 2013, and found a path which transects the urban heat island.  Data from the probe is sent to a laptop through the USB port directly, where it can easily be ingested into the laptop. I also have a pocket GPS receiver which can put GPS location and time into the Laptop.  The UHI is a very repeatable feature found in both day and night transects.

 The Alarmists are upset over a 1C increase in temperatures, but the measured increase in our town of 100,000 is on the order of 3-4F or 2.5C caused by paving of roads, traffic, construction of stores, homes, railroads, the Interstate Highway I-10, bridges, overpasses, motels and New Mexico State University.

 My friend is a retired Advance Weather Officer; he retired from the Staff Meteorology office at Kirtland AFB ~1985. He and I are members of a local climate study group called Cruces Atmospheric Sciences Forum.

This was an enjoyable project for a couple of sciences nerds.

Below are two power point presentations on measuring the Las Cruces Urban Heat Island.

Las Cruces Urban Heat Island presents the measurement set up and instruments used.

Las Cruces Urban Heat Island – Part 2 presents additional information and the results of the measurements.