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The Confinement Period and Its Potential Impact on Urban Heat Island and Surface Temperature Using Remote Sensing

A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Remote Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2023) | Viewed by 4353

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Rafiq Hamdi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium, B1180 Brussels, Belgium
Interests: NWP; urban parametrization; urban meteorology; interaction climate change and urban climate; land atmosphere interactions; surface data assimilation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In the context of the COVID-19 outbreak, a lockdown was ordered by authorities. This led to a limitation of industrial production, human activities and transport use. As a result, an improvement in air quality was recorded, and several studies have reported decreases in SO2, CO2 and NOx emissions as well as aerosol optical death, a proxy for atmospheric pollution level.

Aerosols strongly influence climate by affecting the Earth’s energy budget. On one hand, aerosols impact cloud properties. On the other hand, aerosols interact with solar radiation by scattering, reflecting and absorbing it. Additionally, chemical atmospheric composition influences the land surface temperature (LST). As an urban climate indicator, surface urban heat island (SUHI) is computed based on the LST and characterized by the temperature difference between that of an urban city and that of the surrounding rural area.

The lockdown effect from the COVID-19 pandemic on both the surface and the canopy UHI is still uncertain and needs to be further studied as different hypotheses can be put forward:

(i) an increase in evapotranspiration;

(ii) a greenhouse effect reduction, which results from the decrease in pollution levels;

(iii) reduced anthropogenic heat fluxes. 

The objective of this Special Issue is to publish results related to the evolution of surface and canopy urban heat island in global cities based on observational and/or modelling studies.

Dr. Rafiq Hamdi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 3952 KiB  
Article
Effect of COVID-19 Lockdown on Urban Heat Island Dynamics in Prague, Czechia
by Tugba Dogan, Aleš Urban and Martin Hanel
Remote Sens. 2024, 16(7), 1113; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16071113 - 22 Mar 2024
Viewed by 798
Abstract
Urban heat islands (UHI) are a well-known phenomenon adversely affecting human health and urban environments. The worldwide COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 provided a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of decreased emission of air pollution and anthropogenic heat flux (AHF) on UHI. Although [...] Read more.
Urban heat islands (UHI) are a well-known phenomenon adversely affecting human health and urban environments. The worldwide COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 provided a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of decreased emission of air pollution and anthropogenic heat flux (AHF) on UHI. Although studies have suggested that reduced AHF during lockdown decreased atmospheric UHI (AUHI) and surface UHI (SUHI), these results contain inherent uncertainties due to unaccounted weather variability and urban-rural dynamics. Our study comprehensively analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on AUHI and SUHI in Prague, Czechia. By selecting days with similar weather conditions, we examined changes in mean SUHI using MODIS satellite images and in AUHI based on air temperature from Prague weather stations for the Lockdown period during March–April 2020 versus a Reference period from March–April 2017–2019. Our results show that, in comparison to the Reference period, the Lockdown period was associated with a 15% (0.1 °C) reduction of SUHI in urbanized areas of Prague and a 0.7 °C decline in AUHI in the city center. Additionally, the observed decreases in satellite-based aerosol optical depth and nitrogen dioxide by 12% and 29%, respectively, support our hypothesis that the weakened UHI effects were linked to reduction in anthropogenic activities during the lockdown. Revealing the largest decrease of mean SUHI magnitude around the periphery of Prague, which has predominantly rural land cover, our study emphasizes the need to consider the effects of urban-rural dynamics when attributing changes in SUHI to AHF. Our findings provide additional insights into the role of reduced anthropogenic activities in UHI dynamics during the COVID-19 lockdown and offer policymakers a comprehensive understanding of how the complex interaction between urban and rural microclimate dynamics influences the SUHI phenomenon. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Confinement Period and Its Potential Impact on Urban Heat Island and Surface Temperature Using Remote Sensing)
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20 pages, 12719 KiB  
Article
Large-Scale Urban Heating and Pollution Domes over the Indian Subcontinent
by Trisha Chakraborty, Debashish Das, Rafiq Hamdi, Ansar Khan and Dev Niyogi
Remote Sens. 2023, 15(10), 2681; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15102681 - 22 May 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2603
Abstract
The unique geographical diversity and rapid urbanization across the Indian subcontinent give rise to large-scale spatiotemporal variations in urban heating and air emissions. The complex relationship between geophysical parameters and anthropogenic activity is vital in understanding the urban environment. This study analyses the [...] Read more.
The unique geographical diversity and rapid urbanization across the Indian subcontinent give rise to large-scale spatiotemporal variations in urban heating and air emissions. The complex relationship between geophysical parameters and anthropogenic activity is vital in understanding the urban environment. This study analyses the characteristics of heating events using aerosol optical depth (AOD) level variability, across 43 urban agglomerations (UAs) with populations of a million or more, along with 13 industrial districts (IDs), and 14 biosphere reserves (BRs) in the Indian sub-continent. Pre-monsoon average surface heating was highest in the urban areas of the western (42 °C), central (41.9 °C), and southern parts (40 °C) of the Indian subcontinent. High concentration of AOD in the eastern part of the Indo-Gangetic Plain including the megacity: Kolkata (decadal average 0.708) was noted relative to other UAs over time. The statistically significant negative correlation (−0.51) between land surface temperature (LST) and AOD in urban areas during pre-monsoon time illustrates how aerosol loading impacts the surface radiation and has a net effect of reducing surface temperatures. Notable interannual variability was noted with, the pre-monsoon LST dropping in 2020 across most of the selected urban regions (approx. 89% urban clusters) while it was high in 2019 (for approx. 92% urban clusters) in the pre-monsoon season. The results indicate complex variability and correlations between LST and urban aerosol at large scales across the Indian subcontinent. These large-scale observations suggest a need for more in-depth analysis at city scales to understand the interplay and combined variability between physical and anthropogenic atmospheric parameters in mesoscale and microscale climates. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Confinement Period and Its Potential Impact on Urban Heat Island and Surface Temperature Using Remote Sensing)
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