Modelling the spatiotemporal change of canopy urban heat islands

Abstract

This study models the spatiotemporal change of Birmingham's urban heat island (UHI) using air temperature measurements made during the HiTemp project to study the atmospheric conditions over the city [1]. The study identifies the causative factors and their contributions to the formation of UHI, based on a number of data used to build 2.5 D model; land cover, land use, geometrical factors and shadow layers.The raw air temperature measurements were filtered, georeferenced and interpolated to create maps of temperature variations. The expected influencing parameters on the development of the UHI were derived and prepared for regression modelling. The results showed that the difference in temperature across Birmingham city through two years of ground measurements (June 2012 -June 2014) reached up to 13.53 °C. The UHI's appeared daytime and night-time throughout the different seasons for approximately 56% of the total hours during the study period. However, the high intensity events happened during the calm and clear nights. Moreover, buildings' shadow provided up to 2 °C reduction to the air temperature, while the wind speed and direction are responsible for the size and distribution of hot spots. The built up area contributed to increase the UHI, whereas, the other types of land cover and the geometrical parameters, contributed less.

Sixty-Year Changes in Residential Landscapes in Beijing: A Perspective from Both the Horizontal (2D) and Vertical (3D) Dimensions

“…This is likely because the residential neighborhoods with higher buildings tend to have lower building density, and higher proportional greenspace coverage (Tables 5 and 6). Additionally, high-rise buildings can provide large shaded areas that also can effectively reduce the surface and air temperature [44,46,47].…”

Coping with the impacts of urban heat islands. A literature based study on understanding urban heat vulnerability and the need for resilience in cities in a global climate change context

“…The wind and thermal regime of the cities depends on the land-cover and land-use character of the urban territory (Gago et al, 2013). Urban heat island effect reduction can be achieved as a result of increased evapotranspiration: as the vegetation cover releases latent heat and at the same time reduces the amount of energy available for heating, green areas can potentially cool the surrounding area (Peng et al, 2012;Ali et al, 2016). The natural process of tree transpiration lowers temperature (Gartland, 2010).…”

The Future of Climate-Resilient and Climate-Neutral City in the Temperate Climate Zone

“…To understand what is responsible for the city’s chiaroscuro distribution, we need to break SVF into smaller elements. Land cover with buildings [ 130 ], building density [ 130 , 131 ], building volume [ 130 ], aspect ratio [ 132 , 133 ], building symmetry [ 131 ], building element proportions [ 130 ], building orientation [ 134 ], building height [ 134 ], and the presence and size of trees [ 135 ] and other shading elements [ 136 ] are parameters that build up SFV. SVF is positively associated with land surface temperature (LST) [ 137 , 138 ], atmospheric temperature (AT) [ 139 , 140 , 141 , 142 , 143 , 144 , 145 ], and the UHI effect [ 146 , 147 , 148 , 149 ], both during the day [ 150 , 151 , 152 , 153 , 154 , 155 , 156 ] and at night [ 157 , 158 , 159 , 160 , 161 , 162 , 163 , 164 ] in all seasons [ 165 ].…”