How urban parks and their surrounding buildings affect seasonal land surface temperature: A case study in Beijing, China

Abstract

With rapid urbanization, urban areas face deteriorating thermal conditions and climate change challenges. Urban parks have effectively improved urban thermal environments. Several studies have explored the cooling effect of urban parks (PCEs) by adopting buffer analysis and have identified the dominant influencing factors. However, little attention has been paid to the impact of park age and the surrounding buildings on PCEs. Taking Beijing as an example, this study assessed the effects of urban age and surrounding buildings on PCEs across seasons. The main results showed that (1) the newly increasing parks with large areas were mainly distributed in the south and east of the Fifth Ring Road, and the area of the newly increasing parks within the Fourth Ring Road accounted for 16.70% of the total newly increasing parks, (2) the old parks had a lower mean land surface temperature (LST) than that of the newly increasing parks, with extent varying from 0.27° to 1.70°C across seasons, (3) in terms of the mean LST in the park, the old parks had stronger explanatory power than the newly increasing parks in summer (40% vs. 4%), and (4) the relationships between the surrounding buildings and cooling intensity were statistically significant, but with lower explanatory power (< 7%). These findings provide profound insights for improving urban thermal conditions through good maintenance of parks, extension of old parks, and management of surrounding buildings.