NASA scientists and Utah students took Salt Lake's temperature on Monday. And it doesn't look good.

Like other growing cities, ours could use some more trees and plants to cool things down. Here's the story from Science Specialist Ed Yeates.

NASA's special Lear jet was here in 1985. And it was back again Monday - but this time for a much longer flyover, with more equipment.

From the air, infrared sensors made maps - marking hot and cool spots along the Wasatch Front. Yellows and reds are hot - the blues and greens cool.

An earlier map showed the buildings at Triad Center are hot - but down on the plaza, with lawn and trees - it's nice and cool.

While the plane was in the air, 150 students around the valley at eight different locations took ground temperatures every two minutes with thermometers attached to simple yardsticks. Other members of the project took more technical ground measurements as well.

Dr. Dale Quattrocki, a senior scientist at NASA, explains, "What we want to do is get a good sampling of air temperatures across the valley so we can therefore model how surface things like pavement or asphalt or buildings or whatever heat up the air temperature above it."

If the air above heats up, so does the cost of air conditioning. And the more electricity we use to air condition, the more we pollute the atmosphere with ozone."

"What we're trying to do is get a sample of different kinds of cities across the U.S., so we can apply this information to other cities without having to go to the expense and time of doing experiments for every single city," says another NASA senior scientist, Dr. Jeff Luvall.

These infrared maps and all the data will go to planners and architects so, in the future, they can break up concrete, asphalt and steel jungles with nature's own natural coolers.

If you don't think it makes a difference, the change in temperature between the tarmac at the airport and a spot of lawn and trees 50 feet away is about 30 degress.