Implications of some urban heat islands

   Optional online resources*

• "Hot Times in the City," Pat Murphy, Environmental News Network, 2 August 2000 -- 
• "What Cities Do to the Local Climate," Sustainable Urban Design and Climate, Bureau of Meteorology, Australia -- Brief explanation of what an urban heat island is and what produces it; how cities should be designed to help lower temperatures and clean the air through better circulation; how trees can help urban climates.
• "Urban Heat Island," Cooperative Institute For Meteorological Satellite Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison -- Good, brief explanation of why cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside.
• Urban Climate Network (Includes "The Urban Climate Articles Database.")
• "Urban Heat Island Images," NASA -- Visible light and thermal images for both Baton Rouge, LA, and Sacramento, CA.
• NASA Climate News and Research -- Links to several NASA studies concerning urban heat.
• "Cooling Our Cities," U.S. Dept. of Energy -- "Planting trees is an attractive strategy both for saving money through energy efficiency and for improving the quality of life in urban areas."
• "Team Probes Atlanta Heat Island," Environmental News Network, 24 March 1999
• "Atlanta Urban Heat Island Research," Watson Technical Consulting, February 1998 -- Two maps show average temperature increases for 1972 and 1993. Discusses why heat islands matter in practical terms.
• "Atlanta's Urban Heat Island," Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, April 1999 (Images at http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagewall/LandSat/atlanta_heat.html )
• "'Island' Sizzle; Growth may make Valley an Increasingly Hot Spot," Steve Yozwiak, The Arizona Republic, 25 September 1998 -- Phoenix area temperatures could continue to increase-- perhaps as much as 15 to 20 degrees above historic averages-- as buildings, roads and parking lots march across former croplands and virgin desert.
• "Thermal Map of the Washington - Baltimore Region," Remotes Sensing Advanced Technology
• "The 1995 Heat Wave in Chicago Illinois," Illinois State Water Survey, July 2000 -- "The heat wave in July 1995 in Chicago was one of the worst weather-related disasters in Illinois history with approximately 525 deaths over a 5-day period. As noted by Changnon et al. (1996), 'The loss of human life in hot spells in summer exceeds that caused by all other weather events in the United States combined, including lightning, rainstorms/floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes.'"
• "Urban Heat Islands and Climate Change-- Melbourne, Australia," C.J.G. Morris, School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, March 2000
• "Turning Down the Heat in Bangkok," Horst-Dieter Heitmann and others, GEO Asia/Pacific
• Heat Island Group, last modified April 2000 -- searches for way to mitigate warming in heat islands

* Jameson Belke contributed to this resource list, 9/99

  Other resources

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Thomas Detwyler maintains this page (tdetwyle@uwsp.edu)
Last updated 13 October 2000