Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Analyses Of Nocturnal Temperature Cooling-Rate Response To Historical Local-Scale Urban Land-Use/Land Cover Change, Winston T. L. Chow, Bohumil M. Svoma

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Urbanization affects near-surface climates by increasing city temperatures relative to rural temperatures [i.e., the urban heat island (UHI) effect]. This effect is usually measured as the relative temperature difference between urban areas and a rural location. Use of this measure is potentially problematic, however, mainly because of unclear ‘‘rural’’ definitions across different cities. An alternative metric is proposed—surface temperature cooling/warming rates—that directly measures how variations in land-use and land cover (LULC) affect temperatures for a specific urban area. In this study, the impact of local-scale (,1 km2 ), historical LULC change was examined on near-surface nocturnal meteorological station temperatures sited …