During the summer 2023, in the framework of the I-CHANGE project, the Barcelona Living Lab on Extreme Events (BLLEE) contacted three citizens that were interested in participating in a campaign to evaluate the extreme temperatures in metropolitan environments, and participating in the analysis of the data recorded. The GAMA Team (Meteorological Hazards Analysis Team) of the University of Barcelona guided them to design the CBM_ET (Castelldefels-Barcelona-Malgrat Extreme Temperatures) Citizen Science campaign.
The three citizens (two men and one woman) represent three different knowledge communities: high school student, university student, and university professor. The results of this joint analysis developed within the I-CHANGE project will be transferred to a high school final research project, a bachelor’s final research project, and a university research project. The three selected people also have a high degree of impact in their respective environments in terms of proposing more #sustainableBehaviors. Three members from the I-CHANGE’s Barcelona Living Lab on Extreme Events team also participated in the campaign, who designed, coordinated, supervised and resolved the problems that arose in the campaign.
The CBM_ET consisted of simultaneous performing bike tracks recording data with a MeteoTracker in the three different cities. Each volunteer designed two routes, in their local area that they feel comfortable repeating it several times using a bike. One of the paths had to be mostly parallel to the coastline and the other perpendicular to it. The data collecting was performed during three selected summer days for each route, at two different times each day:
- Track1 (parallel to the coast), at 11:00 am and 9:30 pm: August 1, 3 and 16
- Track2 (perpendicular to the coast), at 11:00 am and 9:30 pm: August 2, 4 and 17
The objective is to do a microscale analysis of temperature and relative humidity in urban coastal areas and sensibilize citizens about climate change impacts. Now the data analysis begins, to understand the extreme temperatures and gradients in different urban areas and their implications for our health and daily activities.
