![]() The subsurface has “a memory that air temperatures don’t have,” Ferguson says. Aboveground temperatures often swing wildly throughout the year, but the subsurface remains around the yearly average temperature, he explains. These creatures are used to “very static conditions,” says Peter Bayer, a geoscientist at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany, who was also not involved in the paper. It is home to animals that have adapted to subterranean living such as worms, snails, insects, crustaceans and salamanders. The underground world teems with life, however. “For a lot of things in the subsurface, it’s kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind,’” says Grant Ferguson, an engineering geologist at the University of Saskatchewan, who was not involved in the new study. While not an immediate or direct danger to human lives, this previously unknown effect highlights the impacts of a lesser-known component of climate change. “There might have been structural issues caused by this underground climate change that happened, and we didn’t even realize,” he adds. The findings, published on July 11 in Communications Engineering, expose a “silent hazard” to civil infrastructure in cities with softer ground-especially those near water-Rotta Loria says. Rotta Loria, a civil and environmental engineer at Northwestern University. ![]() ![]() “Without realizing it, the city of Chicago’s downtown was deforming,” says the study’s author Alessandro F. Such temperature changes make the ground around them expand and contract enough to cause potential damage. Now that underground heat is building up as the planet warms.Īccording to a new study of downtown Chicago, underground hotspots may threaten the very same structures that emit the heat in the first place. ![]() And basements, subway tunnels and other subterranean infrastructure also constantly bleed heat into the surrounding earth, creating hotspots. These “ urban heat islands” can also develop underground as the city heat diffuses downward, beneath the surface. The streets, sidewalks and roofs of cities all absorb heat during the day, making some urban areas up to six degrees Fahrenheit hotter than rural ones during the day-and 22 degrees F hotter at night. ![]()
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