Mapping Land Surface Temperature Developments in Functional Urban Areas across Europe

Unsustainable development paths have reached critical levels in Europe. In recent years, cities, urbanization has been contributing to the intensification of urban heat islands. To analyze surface islands (SUHI) Europe last few present study combines land temperature (LST) from MODIS with classes CORINE cover data within 617 functional areas (FUAs). Urban and industrial uses significantly higher LST than green across all years (about 4 6 °C), as do agricultural cities. Besides cover, location also influences differences. While, e.g., Bolzano (Italy) shows particularly large differences (>6 °C) between core commuting zone, this effect is hardly visible Porto (Portugal) Madrid (Spain) (<2.5 °C). Cities moderate climates show increasing a city its zones rising (r = 0.68), i.e., less cooling effects at night.