My weather app says it’s 80 degrees, but that’s a lie. I’m standing on a football field at Portland State University with professor Vivek Shandas, and we can feel intense heat radiating off the grass. Instead of being made of cellulose, these blades are plastic, because this field is artificial turf. Whereas natural vegetation has a cooling effect on a landscape — it “sweats” water vapor — this stuff absorbs and radiates the sun’s energy, making the ambient temperature especially uncomfortable.
Shandas, who’s founder and director of the Sustaining Urban Places Research Lab, can prove it. He hands me a Flir (forward-looking infrared) camera that I attach to my phone and control through an app. I point it at the ground and it gives me a color-coded view of the temperature at any given spot — approaching 150 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the ground beneath my feet, compared to as low as 100 degrees in a patch of real grass in the sun next to it. (In the video below comparing the two, brighter oranges and yellows indicate higher temps, with purple showing lower readings.... Read more
