Work

On the statistics of urban heat island intensity

Year: 2013

Type: article

Abstract: We perform a systematic study of all cities in Europe to assess the Urban Heat Island (UHI) intensity by means of remotely sensed land surface temperature data. Defining cities as spatial clusters of urban land cover, we investigate the relationships of the UHI intensity, with the cluster size and the temperature of the surroundings. Our results show that in Europe, the UHI intensity in summer has a strong correlation with the cluster size, which can be well fitted by an empirical sigmoid model. Furthermore, we find a novel seasonality of the UHI intensity for individual clusters in the form of hysteresis‐like curves. We characterize the shape and identify apparent regional patterns.

Source: Geophysical Research Letters

DOI: 10.1002/2013gl057320

Authors: B. Zhou, D. Rybski, J. P. Kropp

Institutions: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, University of Potsdam

Language: English

Topic: Urban Heat Island Mitigation

Subfield: Environmental Engineering

Field: Environmental Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Sustainable cities and communities, Climate action

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, European Commission