Atmospheric blocking is a long standing structure stalled in the mid-troposphere which is often associated with extreme weather events such as droughts, heatwaves, flood and cold air outbreak. A striking atmospheric blocking is identified to persist over the US during 13–17 August 2007, exacerbating the existing drought over the Southeastern US. This pronounced blocking event not only intensifi...

With global warming forecast to continue into the foreseeable future, heat waves are very likely to increase in both frequency and intensity. In urban regions, these future heat waves will be exacerbated by the urban heat island effect, and will have the potential to negatively influence the health and welfare of urban residents. In order to investigate the health effects of the urban heat isla...

The urban heat island effect 1 can be detected throughout the year, but it is of particular public policy concern during the summer, because higher surface air temperature is associated with increases in electricity demand for air conditioning, air pollution, and heat stress–related mortality and illness (Rosenfeld et al. 1995; Nowak et al. 2000; Sailor et al. 2002; Hogrefe et al. 2004). In New...

This paper presents a methodology to approximate the urban heat island effect by using a PostgreSQL database and CitySim software, a simulation tool to evaluate urban energy flows. A ground temperature model has been developed for shallow depths (until 4m), which reproduces the phenomena of heat transfer into the ground on an hourly basis. This model is further used to predict the outdoor groun...

Urban heat islands are one of the most critical urban environment heat problems. Landsat ETM+ satellite data were used to investigate the land surface temperature and underlying surface indices such as NDVI and NDBI. A comparative study of the urban heat environment at different scales, times and locations was done to verify the heat island characteristics. Since remote sensing technology has l...

Urbanization is a global problem with demographic trends. The urban heat island plays a dominant role in local climate systems. Despite existing efforts to understand the impacts of multiple urbanization factors on the urban heat island globally, very little is known about the attribution of urban heat island magnitude to urbanization in different locations or developmental phases. In this stud...

The urbanization effects on land surface phenology (LSP) have been investigated by many studies, but few studies focused on the temporal variations of urbanization effects on LSP. In this study, we used the MODIS EVI, MODIS LST data and China’s Land Use/Cover Datasets (CLUDs) to investigate the temporal variations of urban heat island intensity and urbanization effects on LSP in Northeast China...

This paper examines the utility of the air pollution Model (TAPM) in simulating meteorology and dispersion of PM10 and wind data in order to assess The Impacts of Wind Variability Function on Urban Heat Island for the day of 25, November, 2012 in Karaj city that experienced severe degradation in air quality. Drawing, Skew-T diagrams, maps of surface pressure (500hp), omega (850hp) and atmosp...

To further evaluate the factors influencing public heat and air-quality health, a characterization of how urban areas affect the thermal environment, particularly in terms of the air temperature, is necessary. To assist public health agencies in ranking urban areas in terms of heat stress and developing mitigation plans or allocating various resources, this study characterized urban heat in Cal...