Urban Heat Island Analysis

Many urban centers have been known to be places where diverse styles of structural development are put in place through individual differences, desires and expression of wealth which over the time have brought about the use of series of finished construction materials. The constant increase in the rate of urban development, the use of materials and some of the construction style; have their contributing impact on the environment. These impacts of “growth in urban areas affects urban climate in several ways such as air pollution, altered wind speeds/wind direction and heat stress to a great degree affecting both urban flora/fauna and human health” (Baldasano et al. 2003).
The excessive upsurge of unguarded development in the urban centers induces
There are two (2) methods of measuring temperature in order to justify urban heat Island: Urban Canopy-Layer (UCL) heat Island, and the Urban Boundary-Layer (UBL) heat Island (Qihao, 2010; Voogt, 2004). Urban canopy-layer entails the layer of air usually between urban surface, tree canopies and the building heights; the urban boundary layer is usually a layer of air directly above the canopy layer which often may be about 1 (one) kilometer thick during the day and reduces to about hundreds of meters or less at night (Qihao, 2010; Roberto et al., 2010) while “Urban boundary layer is of high advantage over the urban canopy-layer with a lower boundary subject to the influence of urban surface” (Qihao,
In examining urban heat, land surface temperature has been compared with several identified contributing factors such as Land surface temperature and, biophysical and meteorological factors, such as built-up area and height (Bottyán and Unger, 2003), urban and street geometry (Eliasson, 1996), Land Use/Land Cover (Dousset and Gourmelon, 2003; Weng, 2001), and vegetation. Recently, researches have been conducted in which surface descriptors are used to assess the link between urban material fabric and urban thermal behavior (Lu and Weng, 2006; Weng and Lu, 2008; Weng et al., 2004, 2006).
The main concern of this study is to authenticate the effect of urban development which induces an increase in built-ups surface by the corresponding urban heat pattern obtainable. As such, land surface temperature is to be evaluated comparing surface temperature data of two (2) years with time intervals, to illustrate the impact of excessive urban growth and development on human environment through observed heat pattern. This justifies the reason for adopting the urban boundary layer (UBL) heat Island method of analysis over other forms of