Seasonal and Diurnal Variations in the Relationships between Urban Form and the Urban Heat Island Effect

Abstract

At the city scale, the diurnal and seasonal variations in the relationship between urban form and the urban heat island effect remains poorly understood. To address this deficiency, we conducted an empirical study based on data from 150 cities in the Jing-Jin-Ji region of China from 2000 to 2015. The results derived from multiple regression models show that the effects of urban geometric complexity, elongation, and vegetation on urban heat island effect differ among different seasons and between day and night. The impacts of urban geometric factors and population density in summer, particularly those during the daytime, are significantly larger than those in winter. The influence of urban area and night light intensity is greater in winter than in summer and is greater during the day than at night. The effect of NDVI is greater in summer during the daytime. Urban vegetation is the factor with the greatest relative contribution during the daytime, and urban size is the dominant factor at night. Urban geometry is the secondary dominant factor in summer, although its contribution in winter is small. The relative contribution of urban geometry shows an upward trend at a decadal time scale, while that of vegetation decreases correspondingly. The results provide a valuable reference for top-level sustainable urban planning.