TY - JOUR

T1 - Response of urban heat island to future urban expansion over the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei metropolitan area

AU - Wang, Juan

AU - Huang, Bo

AU - Fu, Dongjie

AU - Atkinson, Peter Michael

AU - Zhang, Xuezhen

N1 - This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Applied Geography. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Applied Geography, 70, 2016 DOI: 10.1016/j.apgeog.2016.02.010

PY - 2016/5

Y1 - 2016/5

N2 - Urban expansion plays a dominant role in the urban heat island (UHI) formation and is thus the essence and fundamental characteristic of the urban fabric. In this study, the responses of UHI to the urban expansion in the past decades were simulated using the coupled weather research forecast/urban canopy model (WRF/UCM) system from the 1980s to 2005 and in the future in 2050 embedded with the fine spatial resolution land use/land cover (LULC) datasets over the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) metropolitan area. With the urban expansion, the validations suggested that the designed models in this research can well simulate the generation and development of UHI. Due to urban expansion, the minimum temperature would rise by about 5 K in the newly developed areas. The temperature over the old urban areas would also increase (<1 K) because of the surrounding newly developed urban areas. The footprint of urban growth, in particular the minimum temperature, was clearly captured in the three scenarios by almost all the variables. These results were quite interesting, and it indicated a more uncomfortable urban environment in the future, especially at night, when the temperature changes are larger due to urban expansion.

AB - Urban expansion plays a dominant role in the urban heat island (UHI) formation and is thus the essence and fundamental characteristic of the urban fabric. In this study, the responses of UHI to the urban expansion in the past decades were simulated using the coupled weather research forecast/urban canopy model (WRF/UCM) system from the 1980s to 2005 and in the future in 2050 embedded with the fine spatial resolution land use/land cover (LULC) datasets over the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) metropolitan area. With the urban expansion, the validations suggested that the designed models in this research can well simulate the generation and development of UHI. Due to urban expansion, the minimum temperature would rise by about 5 K in the newly developed areas. The temperature over the old urban areas would also increase (<1 K) because of the surrounding newly developed urban areas. The footprint of urban growth, in particular the minimum temperature, was clearly captured in the three scenarios by almost all the variables. These results were quite interesting, and it indicated a more uncomfortable urban environment in the future, especially at night, when the temperature changes are larger due to urban expansion.

KW - Urban heat island

KW - Urban expansion

KW - Land use/land cover

KW - Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei metropolitan area

KW - Weather research and forecast model

U2 - 10.1016/j.apgeog.2016.02.010

DO - 10.1016/j.apgeog.2016.02.010

M3 - Journal article

VL - 70

SP - 26

EP - 36

JO - Applied Geography

JF - Applied Geography

SN - 0143-6228

ER -