As an introduction to this special issue on urban heat islands and cool communities, this paper reviews some of the characteristics of urban climates and the causes and effects of urban heat islands. In particular, the impacts of surface albedo, evapotranspiration, and anthropogenic heating on the near-surface climate are discussed. Numerical simulations and field measurements indicate that inc...

Urbanization is developing unprecedentedly on a global scale. One of the chief repercussions of urbanization, caused by man-made alterations in land-use/land-cover (LULC), is the formation of urban heat islands. Albeit, differences among landscape structures and its accompanied effects on the environment are mostly neglected. Accordingly, the main objective of this study is to survey the variou...

BACKGROUND Little attention has been paid to how heat-related health effects vary with the micro-urban variation of outdoor temperatures. This study explored whether people located in micro-urban heat islands are at higher risk of mortality during hot summer days. METHODS Data used included (1) daily mortality for Montreal (Canada) for June-August 1990-2003, (2) daily mean ambient outdoor tem...

The purpose of this study is to investigate Alahsa Governorate status and its vulnerability to generate urban heat islands. Alahsa Governorate is a famous oasis in the Arabic Peninsula including several oil centers. Extensive literature review was done to collect previous relative data on the urban heat island of Alahsa Governorate. Data used for the purpose of this research were collected from...

Elevated summertime temperatures in urban ‘heat islands’ increase cooling-energy use and accelerate the formation of urban smog. Except in the city’s core areas, summer heat islands are created mainly by the lack of vegetation and by the high solar radiation absorptance by urban surfaces. Analysis of temperature trends for the last 100 years in several large U.S. cities indicate that, since | 1...

Rapidly expanding desert populations have significantly altered surface microclimatic conditions. These modifications are evident for much of the year, since desert areas are frequently affected by stable, clear, calm weather. Past empirical analyses of urban effects for Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, have highlighted the large magnitude of the “urban heat island effect” with minimum temperatures...

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...