Impacts of progressive urban expansion on subsurface temperatures in the city of Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

Philip W Visser,Emiel Boerma,Henk Kooi,Victor Bense

doi:10.1007/s10040-020-02150-w

Abstract

Subsurface temperatures are substantially higher in urban areas than in surrounding rural environments; the result is a subsurface urban heat island (SUHI). SUHIs and their drivers have received attention in studies world-wide. In this study, a well-constrained data set of subsurface temperatures from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is presented. The study demonstrates that, through modeling of centuries-long (from fourteenth to twenty-first century) urban development and climate change, along with the history of both the surface urban heat-island temperatures and ground surface temperatures, it is possible to simulate the development and present state of the Amsterdam SUHI. The results provide insight into the drivers of long-term SUHI development, which makes it possible to distinguish subterranean heat sources of more recent times that are localized drivers (such as geothermal energy systems, sewers, boiler basements, subway stations or district heating) from larger-scale drivers (mainly heat loss from buildings and raised ground-surface temperatures due to pavements). Because these findings have consequences for the assessment of the shallow geothermal potential of the SUHIs, it is proposed to distinguish between (1) a regional, long-term SUHI that has developed over centuries due to the larger-scale drivers, and (2) local anomalies caused by anthropogenic heat sources less than one century old.

Highlights

The subsurface urban heat island (SUHI) is the phenomenon of elevated subsurface temperatures in urban areas
SUHIs can be regarded as the subsurface thermal imprint of the meteorological urban heat island (UHI) that causes elevated ground-surface temperature, but anthropogenic heat sources such as basement heating, underground thermal energy storage, sewers, and district heating, provide additional control on the development of a SUHI
The heat that is stored in SUHIs could be retrieved by geothermal energy systems (GES) and used for the heating of buildings, and in that way contribute to the offset of carbon emissions (e.g., Allen et al 2003; Zhu et al 2010; Menberg et al 2013b; Menberg et al 2015; Benz et al 2015; García-Gil et al 2015; Bayer et al 2016; Epting et al 2017)

Summary

Introduction

The subsurface urban heat island (SUHI) is the phenomenon of elevated subsurface temperatures in urban areas. The present study uses recent TD observations, to define the current thermal state, but to reconstruct the spatiotemporal characteristics of the subsurface temperature field of the city of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, as a function of the history of urban expansion using a transient heat flow model covering a time span of several centuries, between 1350 and 2012 CE.

Results

Conclusion