Assessment of daytime and nighttime surface urban heat islands across local climate zones – A case study in Florianópolis, Brazil
Bruno Rech a, Rodrigo Nehara Moreira b, Tiago Augusto Gonçalves Mello c, Tomáš Klouček d, Jan Komárek d,
a Department of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering, School of Technology, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, SC, Brazil
b Center for Engineering, Modeling and Applied Social Sciences, Federal University of ABC, S~ao Bernardo do Campo, SP, Brazil
c Geoprocessing Laboratory, School of Architecture, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
d Department of Spatial Sciences, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
Abstract
Affected air movement, artificial heat production, increased solar absorption and suppressed
vegetation cause significant temperature differences between urban and suburban/rural regions,
forming Surface Urban Heat Islands (SUHI). Here, we propose a methodological framework
combining daytime and nighttime Landsat 8 data with comprehensive statistical evaluation based
on the retrieved information. To quantify SUHI, we selected a pair of daytime and nighttime
Landsat 8 scenes, calculated the Urban Thermal Field Variance Index and applied a compre-
hensive statistical approach to assess differences in SUHI behaviour across Local Climate Zones
and between day and night, examining its relationships with albedo, elevation, land surface
emissivity and vegetation cover. Open urban typologies were characterised by milder day tem-
peratures, especially over open areas with higher buildings, while compact low-rise areas pre-
sented the highest SUHI intensity. Higher buildings presented more intense SUHI at night, with
milder temperatures over open and low-rise regions. These results confirm the SUHI dynamics
and its strong association with the urban structure and the presence of vegetation. The proposed
complex methodological framework can be, with minor adjustments, applied to other regions as
well, which can improve the comparability among studies on SUHI and promote our under-
standing of its causes and possible mitigation measures.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212095524001500?dgcid=author
