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Aerial mapping and remote sensing takes another step forward with this method of modelling lidar data. The usual form of presentation, hill shade, uses a point source to show up surface features. Sky-view factor simulates diffuse light by computing how much of the sky is visible from each point. The result is a greatly improved visibility--as shown here by its use on a test site of known topography in Slovenia. Keywords: sky-view factor, relief visualisation, historic landscape, airborne laser scanning, lidar, Introduction Airborne laser scanning (also known as lidar imaging) has provided major advances in remote sensing. Because the technology enables production of digital elevation models of very high resolution (better [...]

Monitoring and nowcasting of urban air temperatures are of high interest for prediction of heat stress in cities. Routine observation is so far limited by the complex coupling between atmosphere and land surface in urban areas, which makes estimation more difficult. In this study, we have investigated the capability of multitemporal land surface temperatures (LSTs) from the geostationary Spinning Enhanced Visible Infra-Red Imager instrument for estimation of urban air temperatures. The results are very promising with root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) of 1.5–1.8 K for six stations in Hamburg and explained variances of 97%–98%. Both the annual and diurnal cycles were well represented by the empirical models and the use of multitemporal data substantially increased the model performance. Further, the model was run in a forecast mode without actual LST information. Here, the best predictors reached RMSEs of 1.9–2.4 K and R^2 of 95%–97% for a 2-h forecast. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]