Assessment of Spatio-Temporal and diurnal Urban Heat Island Intensities
in Delhi Urban agglomeration using a high resolution Weather Research
and Forecasting Model
Abstract
Urban Heat Island (UHI) is defi ned as increased surface and air
temperatures of urban areas ascompared to rural surroundings. Thermal
remote sensing data have been used extensively tostudy Surface Urban
Heat Island Intensities (SUHII). However, it fails to provide
information ondiurnal profi le of UHI as well as information on Canopy
Layer Urban Heat Island Intensities(CLUHII). To overcome these
limitations, integrated Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)-Urban
model have been employed in this study to downscale meteorological
variables to urbanscale (~500 m) for assessment of
spatio-temporal and diurnal profi le of SUHII and CLUHII inDelhi Urban
Agglomeration (UA). Delhi UA is third largest UA of the world and
largest interstate,densely populated and multi nuclei UA of India. WRF
model has been set up with two way nesteddomains of 1.5 km and 0.5 km to
take into consideration of local as well as regional weatherphenomenon.
Simulations has been carried out for a time period of three days (due
tocomputationally intensive simulation) in each season viz. 4-6 June,
2017 in summer season and15-17 January, 2017 in winter season.
Evaluation of model performance with ground basedobservations revealed
improved RMSE values for Temperature at 2m, wind speed and
surfacepressure. Analysis of spatio-temporal and diurnal variability of
SUHII in the study region revealedmore UHI during nighttime to morning
time (maximum SUHII was observed at 5:30 IST), whereasminimum SUHII
value were observed during daytime at 11:30 IST and 14:30 IST in
summerseason (Figure 1). As a matter of fact, urban area displayed cool
island effect at 11:30 IST.Similar observations were noted while
studying the pattern of winter SUHII. Diurnal variability inCLUHII which
is computed from model outputs of Temperature at 2m also displayed
similarpattern of UHI during winter and summer season as displayed by
SUHII. However, in winterCLUHII displayed comparatively more magnitude
as compared with winter SUHII. Since, urbanareas displayed lower
temperature as compared to its surrounding at 11:30 AM time, the time
ofpass of thermal remote sensing satellites (pass time 10:30 AM - 11:30
AM IST) raises concernfor SUHII studies especially in arid and semi-arid
regions like Delhi which is surrounded by sand or bare soil that heats
up faster than urban built up.