July 21,2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, While many coaches and players love the benefits of artificial fields. Increasingly, municipalities are raising questions about extremely high temperatures on the playing fields when the weather is hot and sunny. Turf field can average 10 degrees hotter than natural grass.
Experts call this the “heat island ” effect : The first evidence of a “heat island” effect came a few years ago, when Columbia University climate researcher Stuart Gaffin analyzed thermal images generated from NASA satellite maps of New York City. He wanted to figure out how urban trees may help cool down neighborhoods. When Gaffin noticed a bunch of hot spots on the maps, he assumed they were rooftops. But he wanted to know for certain.
“So we picked five or six really hot locations in the Bronx and went to visit them, and two turned out to be turf fields” says Gaffin. In retrospect, he says he should have realized that, because they’re a perfect sunlight-absorbing system. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93364750
In 2008 to understand just how hot the synthetic fields can get, we visited Riverside Park in Manhattan with Geoffrey Croft, founder of NYC Park Advocates.
Carrying a thermometer, Croft stood at the periphery of one of the turf fields that’s used for a soccer camp.
In the shade it’s 86 degrees. But out in the center of the soccer field where kids are playing soccer, the sun is directly overhead. Holding his thermometer waist-high, he gets a reading of 160.6 degrees Fahrenheit.Croft is surprised. “It’s way higher than I thought it would be,” he says.https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93364750
