Alexander, Paul John and Mills, Gerald (2014) Local Climate Classification and Dublin’s Urban Heat Island. Atmosphere, 5 (4). pp. 755-774. ISSN 2073-4433

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Abstract

A recent re-evaluation of urban heat island (UHI) studies has suggested that the urban effect may be expressed more meaningfully as a difference between Local Climate Zones (LCZ), defined as areas with characteristic dimensions of between one and several kilometers that have distinct effects on climate at both micro-and local-scales (city streets to neighborhoods), rather than adopting the traditional method of comparing urban and rural air temperatures. This paper reports on a UHI study in Dublin (Ireland) which maps the urban area into LCZ and uses these as a basis for carrying out a UHI study. The LCZ map for Dublin is derived using a widely available land use/cover map as a basis. A small network of in-situ stations is deployed into different LCZ across Dublin and additional mobile temperature traverses carried out to examine the thermal characteristics of LCZ following mixed weather during a 1 week period in August 2010. The results show LCZ with high impervious/building coverage were on average >4 °C warmer at night than LCZ with high pervious/vegetated coverage during conditions conducive to strong UHI development. The distinction in mean LCZ nocturnal temperature allows for the generation of a heat map across the entire urban area.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	We gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments from the four anonymous reviewers which improved upon the earlier version of this paper. The authors wish to thank David Sailor and Portland State University for kindly lending them the equipment used for the mobile traverses. This work was funded in part by the Fulbright EPA Environmental Science and Policy Award. The Network of Weather Stations was funded by both National University of Ireland Maynooth and University College Dublin seed-funding. We acknowledge the schools for kindly allowing us to locate stations on their grounds. We also thank Rowan Fealy, Stephanie Keogh and Keith Sunderland for assisting with the traverses.
Keywords:	microclimatology; urban geography; urban heat island; local climate zones;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units, ICARUS
Item ID:	18750
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos5040755
Depositing User:	Corinne Voces
Date Deposited:	23 Sep 2024 08:17
Journal or Publication Title:	Atmosphere
Publisher:	MDPI
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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