Seasonal Cooling Effect of Vegetation and Albedo Applied to the LCZ Classification of Three Chinese Megacities

The urban heat island effect poses a growing threat to human society, especially in densely populated and developed megacities. With the introduction of the Local Climate Zones (LCZ) framework, new perspectives and findings have been brought to urban heat island studies. This study investigated the cooling effect of vegetation and albedo on the...

Characterizing the thermal effects of vegetation on urban surface temperature

Vegetation is important for urban heat mitigation. The cooling intensity of vegetation is affected by background climate and urban design. How to evaluate vegetation cooling efficiency under different climate conditions is still an issue open to discussion. In this study, a normalized indicator of urban vegetation cooling efficiency (NVCE) is...

Multi-Source Hydrological Data Products to Monitor High Asian River Basins and Regional Water Security

This project explored the integrated use of satellite, ground observations and hydrological distributed models to support water resources assessment and monitoring in High Mountain Asia (HMA). Hydrological data products were generated taking advantage of the synergies of European and Chinese data assets and space-borne observation systems....

Observing the impact of urban morphology and building geometry on thermal environment by high spatial resolution thermal images

Urban surface temperature is a very important variable in the observation and understanding of energy exchange. A comprehensive understanding of the urban thermal environment is of great significance towards the adaptability of urban areas to climate hazards. The heterogeneity of urban space increases the complexity of the urban surface...

Constructing dataset of classified drainage areas based on surface water-supply patterns in High Mountain Asia

The High Mountain Asia (HMA) region, ranging from the Hindu Kush and Tien Shan in the west to the Himalaya in the south with an altitude between 2000 and 8844 m, holds the largest reservoir of glaciers and snow outside Earth Polar Regions. In the last decades, numerous glaciers and lake areas there have undergone tremendous changes with water...

Development of spectral-phenological features for deep learning to understand Spartina alterniflora invasion

Invasive Spartina alterniflora (S. alterniflora), a native riparian species in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, has led to serious degradation to the ecosystem and biodiversity as well as economic losses since it was introduced to China in 1979. Although multi-temporal remote sensing offers unique capability to monitor S. alterniflora over large...

Parameterization of urban sensible heat flux from remotely sensed surface temperature: Effects of surface structure

Sensible heat exchange has important consequences for urban meteorology and related applications. Directional radiometric surface temperatures of urban canopies observed by remote sensing platforms have the potential to inform estimations of urban sensible heat flux. An imaging radiometer viewing the surface from nadir cannot capture the...

Parameterization of Surface Roughness Based on ICESat/GLAS Full Waveforms: A Case Study on the Tibetan Plateau

Glaciers in the Tibetan mountains are expected to be sensitive to turbulent sensible and latent heat fluxes. One of the most significant factors of the energy exchange between the atmospheric boundary layer and the glacier is the roughness of the glacier surface. However, methods to parameterize this roughness for glacier surfaces in remote...