Abstract
Abstract. The Urban Heat Island (UHI) describes the increase of near surface temperatures within an urban area compared to its rural surrounding. While the concept of the UHI is in itself quite simple, it is more complex to apply it to gridded datasets. The main complication lies in the rural baseline definition. Therefore, we propose three approaches to calculate the spatial UHI representation for gridded datasets from (i) a single point baseline, (ii) an area averaged baseline, and (iii) a nearest neighbor-based baseline field. Based on these approaches, seven methods are tested as an example for a case study utilizing model simulations for three metropolitan areas in Central and Western Europe (Berlin, Paris and Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area). The results show that all methods perform reasonable in absence of complex terrain, biases and large scale temperature gradients. However, with at least one of these features present, the UHI visualization is less prominent or nonexistent, except for the nearest-neighbor approach which consistently shows reasonable spatial characteristics of the UHI across all scenarios.
Highlights
The Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a well-known phenomenon, which has first been described by Howard (1833) and has later been conceptualized (e.g., Oke, 1969)
The corresponding model data comes from simulations with the ICOsahedral Nonhydrostatic Model (ICON) of the German Meteorological Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD)
The previously presented methods are applied to the 2 m temperature field of the aforementioned metropolitan agglomerations Berlin, Paris and Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan area at 22:00 UTC on 25 June 2019 as provided by the ICON model output
Summary
The Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a well-known phenomenon, which has first been described by Howard (1833) and has later been conceptualized (e.g., Oke, 1969). It represents the near-surface characteristic of generally higher temperatures in urban areas compared to cooler temperatures over the surrounding rural areas. A main effect of the UHI is the increased heat stress and discomfort for humans living or working in urban environments. These characteristics are becoming more and more important with the progressing urbanization and the effect of climate change on the UHI (e.g., Scott et al, 2018; Oleson, 2012). Results will be shown and discussed for he metropolitan regions of Berlin, Rhine-Ruhr (both Germany) and Paris (France)
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