Land Surface Temperature Relationship with the Land Use/Land Cover Indices Leading to Thermal Field Variation in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

Abstract

The increase in the Land Surface Temperature (LST) caused by global warming and extreme weather events is significantly increasing Urban Hot Spots (UHS) while impacting the environmental quality within urban areas. In this research, with the help of Landsat 5, 7, and 8 satellite images, the evolution of Land Use/Cover (LULC), LST, and Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) between the years 1985 and 2020 is examined. The main aim is to evaluate how these variables, together with the Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI), Urban Index (UI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), Built Index, and Proportion Vegetation (PV) have influenced the variability of the UHS and the level of thermal comfort according to the Thermal Field Variance Index (UTFVI). The results report significant average rises of the variables: LST (6.62 °C), SUHI (0.97 °C), UHS (8.61%) of the UI and NDBI indices and class 6 of UTFVI (88.53%) that are related to the variability of the LULC corroborated by statistical analysis. Our results provide valuable information on the future development of urban areas in Northern Cyprus to make them more resilient and sustainable to rising temperatures.