Impact of surface characteristics and their adjacency effects on urban land surface temperature in different seasonal conditions and latitudes

Abstract

Urban land surface temperature (ULST) is a key variable for environmental applications and widely used in a variety of fields. However, retrieving ULST with high spatial and temporal resolution is still a challenging task since its a function of surface characteristics and geographical, climatic, and seasonal conditions. Assessing the type and intensity of the impact of surface characteristics effect on ULST is one of great importance way in improving urban environmental conditions. Hence, the purpose of this study is to evaluate and model the impact of surface characteristics and their adjacency effects on ULST in different seasonal conditions and latitudes. First, ULST and surface characteristic maps were prepared for six European cities in different seasonal conditions. Then, adjacency effects maps of these surface characteristicswere prepared using the proposed inverse distance weighted kernel. Finally, the impacts of surface characteristics and their adjacency effects on ULST were evaluated and compared in different seasonal conditions and latitudes. The mean absolute r between biophysical (topographical) characteristics and ULST in warm and cold seasons were 0.52 (0.22) and 0.25 (0.12), respectively. In the warm season, the mean increase in absolute r between the surface biophysical and topographical characteristics and ULST due to the adjacency effects were 0.10 and 0.04, respectively. For the cold season, these values were 0.03 and 0.03, respectively. By increasing latitude, the impact of surface biophysical characteristics on ULST increased, and the impact of topographical characteristics decreased. ULST modeling accuracy increases by consideration of the adjacency effects. ULST was affected more by the adjacency effects of surface biophysical characteristics than the adjacency effects of surface topographical characteristics. The results of this study showed that in evaluating the impact of surface characteristics on ULST, their adjacency effects and seasonal and geographical conditions should be taken into account.