Community Research on Climate and Urban Science Urban Integrated Field Laboratory

CROCUS logo.

Cristina Negri, Argonne National Laboratory (Lead PI)

The Community Research on Climate and Urban Science (CROCUS) UIFL is a community-driven scientific effort to understand the interactions between cities and climate. The large CROCUS team, led by Argonne National Laboratory and including an inclusive set of scientific, educational, and community organizations, will advance urban science in the highly diverse Chicago region as a playbook that can be used by other major cities.

CROCUS will leverage existing, extensive observational and modeling capabilities and will empower and actively involve diverse communities as part of the research team to enable just, long-term societal benefits from climate mitigation and adaptation, such as reducing emissions and adapting neighborhoods to address future effects of climate change. Through the planned research activities, CROCUS will provide extensive educational opportunities to students from Minority Serving Institutions and Historically Black Colleges and Universities, as well as chart the path to novel climate-focused careers.

People relaxing by Lake Michigan in summer, city skyline in background.

Chicago Lakefront. The Chicago region, reclaimed from a swamp and nestled between Lake Michigan and former prairie land now converted to agriculture, presents formidable opportunities for novel science.

The Chicago region, reclaimed from a swamp and nestled between the understudied, but critically important, Lake Michigan and former prairie land now converted to agriculture, presents formidable opportunities for novel science. CROCUS will enact a network of observations and modeling efforts to unravel the effects of local and regional climate processes on communities, and conversely to understand how urban systems affect their regional climate. Working with community leaders and addressing community-driven objectives, CROCUS will develop tools for future urban science, include the needs of diverse, understudied communities, and inform key objectives of major regional climate planning documents.

Examples of CROCUS activities include:

  • the development of new ways to sense, monitor and process environmental conditions to be used by models
  • the advancement of the state-of-the art in representing urban systems in Earth System/climate models (ESMs), and linking ESMs with decision science models
  • extend the benefits of the science outcomes to communities to identify and deploy equitable climate solutions and understand their system-wide impacts
  • define specific problems and research gaps related to the Chicago region
  • provide tools and methods for measuring the impacts of the clean energy transition has on climate and community livelihood and inform the tradeoffs and outcomes that are most responsive to community needs.

CROCUS’s modular, portable, and scalable approach to integrate modeling with experimentation and observations will connect amicably with other UIFLs to coproduce knowledge and advance fundamental and community urban climate science. The outcomes of CROCUS will leapfrog scalability from local to global climate models, deliver best practices for public-private-industry-community partnerships, and revolutionize how America addresses urban sustainability with distributed and equitable urban solutions.

Participating Institutions:

  • Argonne National Laboratory
  • Blacks in Green
  • Chicago State University
  • CIEMAT
  • City Colleges of Chicago
  • Greater Chatham Initiative
  • Metropolitan Mayors Caucus
  • North Carolina A&T State University
  • Northeastern Illinois University
  • Northwestern University
  • Puerto Rican Agenda
  • University of Chicago
  • University of Illinois–Chicago
  • University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign
  • University of Notre Dame
  • University of Texas–Austin
  • University of Wisconsin–Madison
  • Washington University in St. Louis
Video still of

Creating a Scientific Supersite to Study Climate Change

On July 18, 2023, the CROCUS team installed sensors and equipment at Chicago State University to measure air quality, weather conditions, rainfall, and soil conditions.

Video still of Climate Learning in Action: CROCUS Interns Reflect on Summer Experiences.

Climate Learning in Action: CROCUS Interns Reflect on Summer Experiences

University students from across the country who participated in 2023 CROCUS internships presented posters, shared lessons learned, and heard advice from CROCUS leaders.

Video still of Climate Change: The Story of Chatham.

Climate Change: The Story of Chatham

Nedra Sims Fears, Executive Director of Greater Chatham Initiative, tells the story of flooding in the Chatham community.

Video still of CROCUS Deploys First Sensor Array at Northeastern Illinois University.

CROCUS Deploys First Sensor Array at Northeastern Illinois University

CROCUS scientists discuss the project and deploy a set of scientific instruments on a rooftop at the main campus of Northeastern Illinois University located in Chicago’s North Park neighborhood.