Berlin 2024 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 7: Poster

SOE 7.2: Poster

Monday, March 18, 2024, 18:00–20:30, Poster D

Describing the Urban Heat Island effect with every-pair interactions — Yunfei Li¹, Fabiano L. Ribeiro², Bin Zhou³, and •Diego Rybski¹ — ¹Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), P.O. Box 601203, 14412 Potsdam, Germany — ²Department of Physics (DFI), Federal University of Lavras (UFLA), Lavras MG, Brazil — ³Faculty of Medicine, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany

At the macroscopic scale, city size represents the most important determinant of the urban heat island (UHI) intensity. We propose an every-pair-interaction model, which incorporates urban form in a meaningful manner, to characterize the UHI intensity. We extract surface UHI intensity estimates from remote sensing data and employ the fractal dimension (obtained from urban land cover data) to characterize the urban form. Fitting the every-pair-interaction model to the data, we find that it performs better than a simple linear combination of logarithmic size and fractal dimension. Interestingly, the every-pair-interaction model represents a generalization as it includes (a) power-law, (b) logarithmic, and (c) saturating size dependence. Our theoretical framework indicates that the UHI intensity saturates with size at least for the considered surface temperature data.

Keywords: urban climate; interactions; fractal dimension; power-law; saturation