Managing heat waves: Temperature Baselining
Addressing heat extremes is a pressing challenge for Western Sydney, particularly as forecasts anticipate hotter and drier summers in the future. In Australia, extreme heat is linked to higher human morbidity than all other natural disasters combined, and also poses significant risk to animals and living infrastructure, such as trees.
In a Western Sydney University-led collaborative project, heat distribution across Sydney Science Park (SSP) was profiled during the summer of 2023-24 to create a baseline to understand temperature trends and weather patterns across the site. This information will inform the new development planning and design to mitigate the impact of heat waves and improve the thermal comfort of the SSP community.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
How have we approached this?
Monitoring was undertaken from 1 December 2023 to 13 March 2024. Forty air and thirty soil temperature sensors were deployed across the entire 311-hectare SSP land holding. Air temperature measurements were recorded at a height of 1.5 to 2 metres at an interval of 10 minutes.
Soil temperature measurements were recorded at a depth of 5 cm and recorded every hour. During the 104 days of data collection, this experiment recorded more than 400,000 individual data points for each of the two parameters, providing a comprehensive snapshot of temperature dynamics within the SSP during the hottest months.
What’s next?
As we analyse the first series of data collection, we aim to identify hotter and cooler parts of the site and understand how extreme heat moves on and off the site. By understanding which direction hot air moves, this will help to plan and prepare SSP to orientate built infrastructure to avoid heat gains and to allow hot air to escape.
We will develop visual products to reinforce the evidence-based design of SSP, including:
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- Digital video products to show how ambient temperature changes through a daily cycle
- Digital map to show heat distribution across the site on heatwave days (ambient temp and soil temp).
The data will be used to assess the thermal impacts created by the transformation of green field to an urban environment. Hence, this study will progress with each repetition of the analysis of summer microclimate in coming years when the SSP is built and occupied.
You can access our first report here.
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