Determination of climatic differences in three different land uses in the city of Erzurum, Turkey

Abstract

This paper deals with the climatic differences between rural, urban and urban forest areas of the city of Erzurum. Data on mean daily temperature, daily maximum–minimum temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, rainfall and sky condition were obtained over a 10-month period, from August (2003) to June (2004). From the data analyzed, it was attempted to determine if there are any differences between the areas and what factors may influence the differences. For the mean temperature, urban area was found to be 1.7 and 0.7 °C warmer than rural and urban forest areas, respectively while urban forest is 1.0 °C warmer than rural. For relative humidity, urban area is drier 3.4% and 3.2% than rural and urban forest areas, respectively, whereas there is a difference of 0.2% between rural and urban forest areas in favor of rural area. Rural area is 0.9 and 0.8 m/s. windier than urban and urban forest areas, respectively while urban area is 0.1 m/s. windier than urban forest area. It was suggested that many factors such as canopy and evapo-transpiration effects of urban forest, surface roughness, smoke and dust, etc. might be effective on the climatic differences. Although it is clear that in order to determine the climatic characteristics of a place, long-term observations are needed, this study is important to give an idea about the differences between these three areas.