Artificial turf has become increasingly popular as an irrigation-free and maintenance-free urban surface. While it is indisputable that artificial turf conserves irrigation water, the lack of evaporation causes thermal impact on the urban environment. The convective and radiative heat transfer from artificial turf to nearby buildings and indirect effects on the community as a whole has been quantified by the Temperatures of Urban Facets in 3-D (TUF-3D, Krayenhoff and Voogt, 2007) model.

TUF-3D consists of radiation, conduction and convection sub-models, and predicts urban surface temperatures for a variety of surface geometries and properties, and weather conditions. To compare artificial turf with natural grass we enhanced TUF-3D to account for evapotranspiration and its effect on reducing sensible heat fluxes at the earth's surface. The effects of material properties of artificial turf for a given climate zone, the direct effect of artificial turf on neighboring buildings, and the indirect effect of increased air temperature throughout the community were studied.