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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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UrbanHeatATL_ChloeWhen Chloe Kiernicki leaves her house near Georgia Tech, she takes the temperature wherever she walks.
She has what’s basically a very fancy thermometer that she clips onto her bag that records the temperature as she goes, noting when and where it’s hotter or cooler as she moves around her neighborhood.
What she finds as she walks around would probably be familiar to many Atlantans in the summer: smaller streets with trees shading the sidewalk feel cooler than bigger streets with lots of lanes, surrounded by parking lots.
Approaching a busy 14th Street intersection, Kiernicki notes the lack of trees.
“There’s so many roads converging and all these gas stations,” she says. “And so just a lot of concrete right now.”
Kiernicki graduated from Tech this past year. Over the summer, she’s one of dozens of people who volunteered to collect data for UrbanHeatATL, a project lead by professors at Georgia Tech and Spelman College to map how hot it is in parts of Atlanta, street by street.
The goal is to get a more detailed understanding of which neighborhoods in Atlanta are the hottest, and to highlight solutions for the most vulnerable communities.
