Climate service for managing the heat hazard risk in urban areas using all-sky land surface temperature

This work describes an exploratory approach to assist decision-makers in urban areas for addressing heat hazard risks in near real-time (https://rebrand.ly/suhi_eu). The proposed service utilizes MSG Land Surface Temperature - All Sky (MLST-AS) data to compute the surface urban heat island (SUHI) and other relevant indicators for major cities in Europe on a daily basis.

The MLST-AS data has a temporal resolution of 30 minutes and a spatial resolution of 3.1 km² at nadir. The SUHI is a measure of the difference in temperature between urban and rural areas and can significantly impact the local climate and environment. The climate service, which is based on a Shiny application written in R and Python, provides an interactive format that allows users to visualize the daily evolution of the SUHI computed from the MLST-AS data for each city, as well as relevant indicators computed at each grid point for the entire European continent. The SUHI is calculated using the methodology proposed in a previous study (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2021.101056) and the results are presented in an easy-to-use format suitable for a wide range of end users, including policymakers, city planners, and the general public. The use of the MLST-AS data allows for accurate and detailed analysis of the SUHI and other indicators in these cities, providing valuable information for urban planning and climate adaptation efforts. The main outcome of this work is the development of an interactive tool for understanding and analysing the SUHI and other indicators in European cities, which can have important implications for urban design and climate resilience measures.

This study has been funded by the project Synergies between Urban Heat Island and Heat Wave Risks in Romania: Climate Change Challenges and Adaptation Options (SynUHI) PN-III-P4-PCE-2021-1695. We gratefully acknowledge the use of the European Weather Cloud in the context of this research.