"The highest temperature that Jonathan Paul has ever recorded in a London Tube station is about 42 Celsius, or 107.6 Fahrenheit. Paul, a researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London, uses his thermometer-equipped smartphone to take such readings. 42C is the kind of heat that would send someone running to the nearest air-conditioned building. Underground, though, they can't. There's nothing but stifling tunnels and screeching trains down here."
"Fitting air-conditioning units to trains risks heating up the tunnels even more, as warm air from inside carriages gets dumped into the aging tubes. But Paul has an idea to cool the tunnels themselves. "Water, as a refrigerant, can hold huge amounts of heat," he says. "It's everywhere beneath London." He's working on a technology that would use groundwater at roughly 10 Celsius to ferry excessive heat away from underground stations."
Train and subway temperatures are reaching dangerous levels, with London Tube stations recording around 42 Celsius and carriage temperatures up to 47 Celsius in other countries. Underground tunnels in London store heat in dense clay, and conventional air-conditioning on trains can worsen tunnel temperatures by dumping warm air into aging infrastructure. Researchers are developing tunnel-focused cooling using groundwater at about 10 Celsius to extract excess heat and testing prototypes in a chalk quarry near Reading. Global reports from Japan, Morocco and India show insufficient cooling during heat waves, and overheating has caused commuter fainting and serious passenger discomfort.
Read at WIRED
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