Evaluating the impacts of land use/land cover changes and climate variations on urban heat islands using the WRF-UCM model in Hefei, China

Keqi Zhou, Lei Zhong (), Zixin Wang, Jie Liu and Zhenhao Wu
Additional contact information
Keqi Zhou: University of Science and Technology of China
Lei Zhong: University of Science and Technology of China
Zixin Wang: University of Science and Technology of China
Jie Liu: University of Science and Technology of China
Zhenhao Wu: University of Science and Technology of China

Climatic Change, 2024, vol. 177, issue 8, No 4, 20 pages

Abstract: Abstract The urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon is concurrently influenced by urban expansion and climate change. However, the individual impacts of land use/land cover (LULC) changes and climate change remain unclear. In the present study, a high-resolution numerical Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model coupled with a single-layer urban canopy model (UCM) is implemented for Hefei to assess the influences of LULC and climate change simultaneously. The comprehensive increase in UHI intensity (UHII) was 0.76 K from 2003 to 2019 in the study area. The overall influence of LULC changes on the UHI effect was a 0.33 K increase in intensity and a 190 km² expansion in coverage. The results also show that the emergence of new high-intensity urban areas developed from farmlands had the strongest impact on UHI development compared to other types of LULC changes. The overall contribution of climate change to the UHII increased by 0.27 K from 2003 to 2019. The change in the storage heat flux was found to be responsible for the nocturnal UHII variation and long-term increase in the UHII, while the sensible heat flux was responsible for the diurnal UHII.

Keywords: UHI; Urban expansion; LULC; Climate change; WRF-UCM (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-024-03777-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:177:y:2024:i:8:d:10.1007_s10584-024-03777-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-024-03777-4

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().