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...

Impacts of urban morphology on sensible heat flux and net radiation exchange

Urban morphology affects the sensible heat flux and net radiation exchange which can alter urban heat mitigation plans. This study first parameterized the geometric effects on the net radiation, and then calculated the net radiation and sensible heat flux in the urban landscape of Hong Kong. Considering that the sensible heat flux is the main...

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...

Anisotropy parameterization development and evaluation for glacier surface albedo retrieval from satellite observations

Glacier albedo determines the net shortwave radiation absorbed at the glacier surface and plays a crucial role in glacier energy and mass balance. Remote sensing techniques are efficient means to retrieve glacier surface albedo over large and inaccessible areas and to study its variability. However, corrections of anisotropic reflectance of...

Impacts of the Silk Road pattern on the interdecadal variations of the atmospheric heat source over the Tibetan Plateau

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between the boreal summer Silk Road Pattern (SRP) and the atmospheric heat (<Q1>) over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) region, using 5 reanalysis datasets over the period 1979–2019. Our results indicate an interdecadal change of boreal summer SRP over the Eurasian region, with a regime shift in...

Documenting Impacts of Hydro-Meteorological Events Using Earth Observation

The ambition of H2020 OPERANDUM project is to develop and document Nature Based Solutions (NBS) to mitigate risks associated with hydro-meteorological (HM) hazards. NBS mitigate risks by reducing the vulnerability of a particular system. The aim of this work is to demonstrate the use of multisource remote sensing data in documenting the impact...

A semi-empirical method for estimating complete surface temperature from radiometric surface temperature, a study in Hong Kong city

The complete surface temperature (T_c) in urban areas, defined as the mean temperature of the total active surface area, is an important variable in urban micro-climate research, specifically for assessment of the urban surface energy balance. Since most vertically-oriented building facets are not observed by a nadir-viewing remote...

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...

Evaluation of a Linear Mixing Model to Retrieve Soil and Vegetation Temperatures of Land Targets

A simple linear mixing model of heterogeneous soil-vegetation system and retrieval of component temperatures from directional remote sensing measurements by inverting this model is evaluated in this paper using observations by a thermal camera. The thermal camera was used to obtain multi-angular TIR (Thermal Infra-Red) images over vegetable and...