Decadal Variation of the Land Surface Temperatures (LST) and Urban Heat Island (UHI) over Kolkata City Projected Using MODIS and ERA-Interim DataSets

Abstract

Urban heat island (UHI) is one of the essential climatic phenomena on the land surface induced by urbanization due to the difference in albedo, surface roughness, and heat−flux exchange. The study tries to examine the application of quantitative remote sensing of UHI, which could encourage our comprehension about urban/suburban environmental conditions and its association with urbanization in the Kolkata city. Kolkata is one of the most populated cities in the world and seventh-most populated city in India. Overpopulation over the years increased the human-made structures as well as industrialization in the Kolkata city, which replaced the vegetation and land cover area, extending it to the city outskirts impacting the UHI. Analyzing the MODIS and ERA-Interim remote sensing data from 2008 to 2017 provides a cost-effective and time-consuming methodology for spatio−temporal analyses of land surface temperature (LST) distribution. For urban climate-related studies, canopy urban heat island (CUHI) is studied based on air temperature. The validation results indicate that the surface urban heat intensity (SUHI) during the summer months reveals an average heat island effect of 1.5 K during the daytime and 0.4 K in the night time. Furthermore, this study shows there is a slight significant relationship between urban heat and vegetation index. However, the growth of vegetation distribution may impact the UHI, and the high LST correlated to the presence of high particulate matter in the area.