In recent years, extreme climate events, including urban floods and heat, have made it clear how vulnerable people and infrastructures are to the impacts of extreme weather. Climate change will likely intensify these effects in the future. Improving the understanding of weather risks, impacts and forecast uncertainty has become a major concern of weather services. Currently, in New York City, local weather station data is available from NWS weather stations located in Central Park, JFK airport and LaGuardia airport. This data is used as input into building energy models. However, the weather data at these locations often differs from the local weather conditions experienced by an urban building. Urban Heat Island (UHI) intensity is one of the vital parameters in studying urban boundary layer meteorology as well as urban planning.

There needs to be more weather stations across the city to estimate more accurate weather parameters including temperature and rainfall. In this proposed project, we would like to expand the current Weather Station Network by building 10 additional weather stations to cover the Staten Island and Bronx areas. Additionally, this project will be essential in promoting climate justice education in public schools and local communities. By building additional weather stations, we can discuss climate change solutions with students and allow residents from across the five boroughs of New York City to engage in climate action within their community.

Specific objectives of the project:

• To develop integrated high-resolution mapping of ground and atmospheric conditions, focusing on the lower atmosphere, to detect and forecast severe wind, tornado, hail, ice, and flash flood hazards.
• To improve the accuracy and lead time of measuring and accessing the precipitation and providing Warn-on-flash flood forecasts and warnings in the New York City region.
  
• To create impacts-based, urban-scale flash flood and hazard warnings and forecasts for a range of public and private decision-makers that result in measureable benefit for public safety and the economy.
  
• To develop collaborative models for federal/municipal/private partnerships for education outreach to NYC schools with on-going interdisciplinary weather system research at CUNY-CREST Institute.