Comparison of the urban heat island intensity quantified by using air temperature and Landsat land surface temperature in Hangzhou, China

Abstract

This study compared different measures of urban heat island (UHI) intensity, which were calculated using both air temperature (Tair) at a height of 1.5m and Landsat land surface temperature (LST) in Hangzhou, China. Two UHI-driven indicators (range and magnitude) and two land-cover-driven indicators (urban-rural and urban-agriculture) were calculated to quantify the UHI intensity based on hourly Tair from five stations and fifteen Landsat 5 LST images. Pearson correlation testing and a moving average times series of the previous 30days were used to investigate the relationship between UHI intensities calculated by different indicators and data. The results indicate that the land-cover-driven indicators explain UHI better than the UHI-driven indicators, while the calculated values of UHI intensity using Landsat LST and hourly Tair are not comparable. We also investigated the influence of weather conditions on UHI intensity. Generally, Landsat-LST-based UHI performs best on hot sunny days, while Tair-based UHI has a better chance during the nighttime following a dry sunny day. This study suggests that the value of UHI intensity can be influenced by the selected indicators, the data used, the acquisition time and the weather conditions. Thus, these factors should be considered when comparing UHI intensity between different cities or quantifying their influences (e.g., population size, land use and land cover change) on UHI intensity.