Urban Growth and Heat in Tropical Climates

Abstract

This research describes the change in temperatures across approximately 270 tropical cities from 1960 to 2020 with a focus on urban warming. It associates urban growth indicators with temperature variations in tropical climate zones (tropical rainforest, tropical monsoon, and tropical wet-dry savanna). Our findings demonstrate that over time while temperatures have increased across the tropics, urban residents have experienced higher temperatures (minimum and maximum) than those living outside of cities. Moreover, in certain tropical zones, over the study period, temperatures have risen faster in urban areas than the background (non-urban) temperatures. The results also suggest that with continuing climate change and urban growth, temperatures will continue to rise at higher than background levels in tropical cities unless mitigation measures are implemented. Several fundamental characteristics of urban growth including population size, population density, infrastructure and urban land use patterns are factors associated with variations in temperatures. We find evidence that dense urban forms (compact residential and industrial developments) are associated with higher temperatures and population density is a better predictor of variation in temperatures than either urban population size or infrastructure in most tropic climate zones. Infrastructure, however, is a better predictor of temperature increases in wet-dry savanna tropical climates than population density. There are a number of potential mitigation measures available to urban managers to address heat. We focus on ecological services, but whether these services can address the projected increasing heat levels is unclear. More local research is necessary to untangle the various contributions to increasing heat in cities and evaluate whether these applications can be effective to cool tropical cities as temperature continue to rise. Our methods include combining several different datasets to identify differences in daily, seasonal, and annual maximum and minimum temperatures.