Mapping Land Surface Temperature Developments in Functional Urban Areas across Europe.

Unsustainable development paths have reached critical levels in Europe. In recent years, in cities, urbanization has been contributing to the intensification of urban heat islands. To analyze the development of surface urban heat islands (SUHI) in Europe in the last few years, the present study combines the land surface temperature (LST) from MODIS with the urban classes of the CORINE land cover data within 617 functional urban areas (FUAs). Urban and industrial uses have significantly higher LST than green urban areas across all years (about 4 to 6 °C), as do agricultural areas within cities. Besides land cover, location also influences LST differences. While, e.g., Bolzano (Italy) shows particularly large LST differences (>6 °C) between the core and the commuting zone, this effect is hardly visible in Porto (Portugal) and Madrid (Spain) (<2.5 °C). Cities of moderate climates show increasing differences between a city and its commuting zones with rising LST (r = 0.68), i.e., less cooling effects at night. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]