Cities worldwide are experiencing underground climate change caused by the accumulation of waste heat released by buildings and buried infrastructure. This process can produce ground temperatures approaching 160°F (70°C), affect depths of up to 100 meters, and progress at rates far exceeding global atmospheric warming. Despite its global prevalence, knowledge of underground climate change remains fragmented across disciplines and largely absent from urban policy and planning. Using interdisciplinary partnerships and global evidence, the Roberta Buffett Institute’s Underground Climate Change Global Working Group is developing the first coordinated effort to understand and address its effects on built, environmental, and human systems. The group will bring together scholars, cities, utilities, and industry partners to synthesize existing knowledge, translate insights from adjacent fields, and identify priorities for research, policy, and practice. Learn about the group’s Chicago-based research in The New York Times >> 

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• Ludmilla Aristilde, Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering
• Giorgia Chinazzo, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering 
• David A. Dana, Professor and Director, Program on Sustainability and Food and Animal Law, Pritzker School of Law and Kellogg School of Management
• George Wells, Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering 
• Giuseppe Buscarnera, Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering
• Gianluca Cusatis, Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering 
• Amanda Stathopoulos, Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering 
• Sera Young, Professor, Department of Anthropology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences 

• Peter Bayer, Professor, University of Halle, Germany 
• Philipp Blum, Professor, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany 
• Ruchi Choudhary, Professor, University of Cambridge, England 
• Jannis Epting, Professor, University of Basel, Switzerland 
• Kathrin Menberg, Associate Professor, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany 
• Deepanshu Shirole, Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, India
• Asal Bidarmaghz, Senior Lecturer, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia
• Alessandro Casasso, Associate Professor, Politecnico di Torino, Italy 
• Giovanni Crosta, Professor, University of Milan, Italy 
• Grant Ferguson, Professor, University of Saskatchewan, Canada 
• Alberto Previati, Associate Professor, University of Milan, Italy 
• Kenichi Soga, Professor, University of California Berkeley, USA 
• Tuvia Turkeltaub, Associate Professor, Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, Israel 

• “Subway systems are uncomfortably hot–and worsening.” McCormick School of Engineering News, March 2026.  

• “Rotta Loria co-leads new journal theme issue on urban heat above and below ground.” McCormick School of Engineering News, November 2025.  
• “Underground heat islands pose silent hazard.” Northwestern Magazine, fall 2023.  
• “Chicago’s downtown buildings are slowly sinking. The culprit? Underground climate change, study shows.” Chicago Tribune, July 2023.  
• “Underground heat is shifting Chicago’s foundations.” The New York Times, July 2023.  

• Rotta Loria, Alessandro F., Jan Carmeliet, and Yongling Zhao. Urban heat above and below ground: towards improved understanding, modelling, mitigation and adaptation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 2025.
• Rotta Loria, Alessandro F. and Zhonghao Chu, Extending spatial regression to the analysis of subsurface urban heat islands. Urban Climate, 2025.
• Rotta Loria, Alessandro F. and Zhonghao Chu, Modeling underground climate change across a city based on data about a building block. Sustainable Cities and Society, 2024.
• Rotta Loria, Alessandro F., The silent impact of underground climate change on civil infrastructure. Communications Engineering, 2023.