Abstract
Complex land use/cover patterns in urban areas significantly influence their prevailing surface temperature conditions. As a result of differential cooling and heating of various land use/cover, large temperature ranges are associated with bare land, built-up land, etc. and low ranges are found in vegetation cover and water bodies. Extremely high and low temperature conditions in built-up land have direct and negative impacts on health conditions, and therefore are imperative to study. Thus, an attempt has been made in this research to analyze seasonal variations in surface temperature in city of Delhi. Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) 5 satellite images for the four seasons, viz., 16 January (winter), 5 March (spring), 8 May (summer) and 29 September (autumn) 2011 have been used to interpret the distribution and changes in surface temperature. A total of 80 samples from all land use/cover categories were taken to generalize the patterns along with north-south and west-east profiles. The extracted surface temperature patterns reflect the spatial and temporal dynamics of temperature over different land use/cover. The north-south and west-east gradient of temperature demonstrates that the core of Delhi has a much lower temperature and weak urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon.
Highlights
Urbanization has produced innumerable changes on the Earth and the associated surface temperatures.As urbanization takes place, rural and sub-urban areas are concretized and agricultural and vegetation cover is converted into urban areas, thereby altering the heat budget
Increased concretization and associated modifications of land use/cover in urban areas have altered the patterns of surface temperature creating distinct micro climates in cities and towns [1,2]
The satellite images were downloaded from the website of United States Geological Survey (USGS) [43] which are freely available to the users (Table 1)
Summary
Urbanization has produced innumerable changes on the Earth and the associated surface temperatures. Rural and sub-urban areas are concretized and agricultural and vegetation cover is converted into urban areas, thereby altering the heat budget. Increased concretization and associated modifications of land use/cover in urban areas have altered the patterns of surface temperature creating distinct micro climates in cities and towns [1,2]. Additional heat is added to nearby areas by industries, vehicles, air conditioning and other activities peculiar to the urban lifestyle [3]. Urban areas generally act as islands of elevated temperatures surrounded by the sea of relatively cooler suburbs [4]. The world is experiencing unprecedented urban growth.
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