UT-City Climate Partnership Thrives

December 8, 2024

The UT-City Climate CoLab made significant strides in its first full year in 2024. The partnership between The University of Texas at Austin and the City of Austin created seasonal climate outlooks for the city, began a project to test whether reflective pavements can reduce temperature and humidity in local neighborhoods, and even helped forecast heat and precipitation for the Paris Olympics. The City of Austin also approved $350,000 for the program in its fiscal year 2025 budget.

Established in 2023, the CoLab is a collaborative effort between the city’s Offices of Sustainability and Resilience and researchers at UT. It is the first city-specific climate collaborative that links city officials and climate scientists to develop city-specific climate data, tools and assessments. “Austin has experienced a series of weather extremes in recent years, from droughts and heat waves to heavy rain events and deep freezes,” said Dev Niyogi, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. “The UT-City Climate CoLab represents a significant step in linking scientific advances with practical city needs and educational opportunities to develop effective climate solutions and resilience.”

Niyogi is leading CoLab research along with Assistant Professor Patrick Bixler of the UT LBJ School of Public Affairs and Associate Professor Junfeng Jiao of the UT School of Architecture. The science team, which includes multiple Jackson School of Geosciences students, is producing two seasonal outlooks a year to help Austin prepare for extreme weather and heat-related issues. The reflective pavement project will continue throughout the summer of 2025. It involves 6.4 lane miles of reflective pavement installed in a southeast Austin neighborhood. The science team installed air temperature and humidity sensors in the neighborhood and in a neighborhood directly south without reflective pavement. In addition to taking measurements, the team is surveying the residents and bringing in people from outside the neighborhood to walk the area and see if there is a noticeable difference in the perceived heat. The group also used artificial intelligence methods perfected at the CoLab to help forecast local weather conditions in Paris for the Summer Olympics.

For more information on the CoLab, see texuslab.org/colab