Catherine Muller and Duick Young from BUCL recently visited Moseley Primary School to give a talk to Years 3-5. The interactive talk was entitled ‘Hot Cities! Temperature, Towns, Climate and Scientists’ and was very well received – they will be returning to the school over the coming months to install a temperature sensor as part of the HiTemp project, and to carry out related-project work with year 6. As part of the HiTemp project, it is envisaged that a number of educational outreach activities will be carried out with the schools involved – this will ultimately improve the schools’ links with the university.
The Birmingham Urban Climate Lab has recently been established in GEES – the lab will focus on all aspects of urban climate over the coming years. Staff in BUCL will initially be focusing efforts on the NERC-funded HiTemp project, which will see 250 temperature sensors and 25 weather stations installed within the Birmingham conurbation: 131 of these will be located on schools, approximately 100 on lampposts in the CBD, whilst the weather stations will be sited in primary sub-stations.
The project will see Birmingham having the densest temperature-sensor network in the world and will lead to a number of research projects examining Birmingham’s urban heat island (UHI) in more detail than ever-before possible.
More about the HiTemp project..
Lee Chapman, Xaioming Cai, Chris Kidd, John Thornes and Sue Grimmond (Kings College, London) have recently been awarded a £760,000 (FEC) grant from NERC under the Networks of Sensors call. The overall aim of this project is to provide a demonstration sensor network designed to measure air temperature across the Birmingham conurbation. The network will consist of a nested array of over 200 weather stations and sensor sites located in or on electricity substations, schools and lighting columns across the city. The project is designed to complement two existing knowledge transfer partnerships underway within the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, which are investigating the impact of urban heat on electricity transformers and vulnerable sectors of the population within Birmingham.
This project will mean that Birmingham will have the densest weather station network in the world and will hence result in a unique, world class climate facility with international appeal.
The grant will last for 3 years in the first instance and funding has been received to employ both a Post-doctoral Researcher and skilled technician on the project.