Investigating vegetation role on UHI with mechanistic modelling worldwide

The urban heat island effect (UHI), defined as the temperature difference between urban areas and their surroundings, has been widely observed in many cities worldwide, impacting urban energy demand, citizen’s comfort and health. UHI intensities have been found to depend on background climate, and the urban fabric, including built (building thermal properties, heights, reflectance) and natural characteristics (vegetation cover, species composition, vegetation management). In this study, we focus on developing a global scale mechanistic understanding of how each of those properties alters the urban energy budget and leads to UHI development. To achieve this goal, we use the state-of-art urban ecohydrological and land-surface model (urban Tethys-Chloris) to perform a set of detailed UHI simulations for multiple large urban clusters across America, Europe and China in a 10-year time period (2009-2019), spanning a gradient of aridity, vegetation amount, and different compositions of the urban fabric. Model simulations were set up using the latest generation remote sensing data and climate reanalysis (ERA5). Using the simulations, we develop a paradigm of how UHIs develop worldwide, and propose viable solutions for sustainable UHI mitigation.