Abstract
The canopy layer urban heat island (UHI) effect, as manifested by elevated near-surface air temperatures in urban areas, exposes urban dwellers to additional heat stress in many cities, specially during heat waves. We simulate the urban climate of various generated cities under the same weather conditions. For mono-centric cities, we propose a linear combination of logarithmic city area and logarithmic gross building volume, which also captures the influence of building density. By studying various city shapes, we generalise and propose a reduced form to estimate UHI intensities based only on the structure of urban sites, as well as their relative distances. We conclude that in addition to the size, the UHI intensity of a city is directly related to the density and an amplifying effect that urban sites have on each other. Our approach can serve as a UHI rule of thumb for the comparison of urban development scenarios.
Highlights
The canopy layer urban heat island (UHI) effect, as manifested by elevated near-surface air temperatures in urban areas, exposes urban dwellers to additional heat stress in many cities, specially during heat waves
UHIs do not remain stable under climate change[2,22] or urban development[20], future strong nocturnal warming due to urban effects has been found in many cities[10,11,14,18,20]
As the UHI effect has the greatest impact during heat waves and usually reaches its maximum at night time, we focus on these conditions
Summary
The canopy layer urban heat island (UHI) effect, as manifested by elevated near-surface air temperatures in urban areas, exposes urban dwellers to additional heat stress in many cities, specially during heat waves. UHIs do not remain stable under climate change[2,22] or urban development[20], future strong nocturnal warming due to urban effects has been found in many cities[10,11,14,18,20] This may not be too critical under normal temperature conditions. Measures to reduce the impact of UHI will contribute to urban heat stress mitigation, especially in the future with more frequent and stronger extreme heat events due to the interactions between urban climate, heat waves, climate change, and urbanisation
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