Surface temperatures in New York City: Geospatial data enables the accurate prediction of radiative heat transfer.

Despite decades of research seeking to derive the urban energy budget, the dynamics of thermal exchange in the densely constructed environment is not yet well understood. Using New York City as a study site, we present a novel hybrid experimental-computational approach for a better understanding of the radiative heat transfer in complex urban environments. The aim of this work is to contribute to the calculation of the urban energy budget, particularly the stored energy.

Mapping Refrigerant Gases in the New York City Skyline.

Cities are now home to more than 50% of the world's population and emit large quantities of pollutants from sources such as fossil fuel combustion and the leakage of refrigerants. We demonstrate the utility of persistent synoptic longwave hyperspectral imaging to study the ongoing leakage of refrigerant gases in New York City, compounds that either deplete the stratosphere ozone or have significant global warming potential. In contrast to current monitoring programs that are based on country-level reporting or aggregate measures of emissions, we present the identification of gaseous plumes with high spatial and temporal granularity in real-time over the skyline of Manhattan.