Evaluation of the Urban Microclimate in Catania Using Multispectral Remote Sensing and GIS Technology

Abstract

This study focuses on the determination and examination of both the Land Surface Temperature (LST) and the atmospheric temperature in the city of Catania Sicily (Italy), through freely available satellite remote sensing images from the Sentinel-2 and MODIS missions. Satellite images were processed as raster data in free and open-source GIS environments. The GIS software allows the retrieval, processing of the satellite images for the estimation of the LST and the atmospheric temperature with a very coarse spatial resolution. In particular, the proposed procedure allows increasing the spatial resolution of satellite images, from 250 m (LRES) to 10 m (HRES) through the principle of “Disaggregation of thermal images”. The analysis provided georeferenced maps which show the LST, as well as the atmospheric temperature within the investigated area with a very fine resolution, 10 m. Such spatial resolution reveals evident correlations between areas with different urban densities and their microclimate. An important result of this study is that significant LST differences can be observed during both day (15–17 °C) and night (2–3 °C) between green and built-up areas. The outcomes of this study highlight the effectiveness of the combined use of satellite remote sensing and GIS for analyzing the thermal response of urbanized areas with different built density.