wind is the carrier of pollutants and any other gaseous or particle matters in the atmosphere. stable atmosphere with low wind provides favorable conditions for high contamination of pollutants in urban areas. the importance of mesoscale atmospheric flows in air pollution dispersion has been recognized in the past three decades and has been the focus of intensive research; both observational an...

Urbanization leads to distinct meteorological features of urban environments, and one the best-known is the urban heat island (UHI) effect. For megacities, these features become mesoscale phenomena (scale ≥ 10 km) that are amplified by the tropospheric feedbacks, and have substantial implications on human well-being. For the first time, a three-dimensional statistical description of the megacit...

Background. Cryptotympana atrata and Hyalessa fuscata are the most abundant cicada species in the Korean Peninsula, where their population densities are higher in urban areas than in rural ones. The urban heat island (UHI) effect, wherein human activities cause urban areas to be significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas, may underlie this difference. We predicted a positive relationship...

The urban heat island (UHI) effect might cause extreme weather, which would seriously affect people’s health, increase energy consumption and cause other negative impacts. To construct urban green spaces is a feasible strategy to effectively weaken the UHI effect. In this study, the cooling effect of green spaces on the UHI effect was carefully investigated in summer and winter in Harbin city. ...

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 spatio-temporal patterns of land use/land cover changes (LUCC) can significantly affect the distribution and intensity of the urban heat island (UHI) effect. However, few studies have mapped a clear picture of the influence of LUCC on UHI. In this study, both qualitative and quantitative models are employed to explore the effect of LUCC on UHI. UHI and LUCC maps were retrieved from Landsat ...

Urban heat island (UHI) is one major anthropogenic modification to the Earth system that transcends its physical boundary. Using MODIS data from 2003 to 2012, we showed that the UHI effect decayed exponentially toward rural areas for majority of the 32 Chinese cities. We found an obvious urban/rural temperature "cliff", and estimated that the footprint of UHI effect (FP, including urban area) w...

Worldwide urbanization has significantly changed the landscape in recent decades, which resulted in an urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon. This study quantitatively analyzed the spatiotemporal changes of the urban heat island (UHI) of Zhangzhou estuary city of China, in the context of urbanisation using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) thermal images acquire...