Urban Heat Islands effect

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Introduction

Urban heat islands occur when human activity and construction create higher temperatures in urban areas than the surrounding landscape. Global warming heralds more heat waves, exacerbated by heat islands and posing severe health risks to residents.

Themes
Urban risk and planning

Knowledge base

Update

How cities worldwide respond to the 2024 hottest temperatures

The city has 220 public schools, and thanks to the Trust for Public Land's (TPL's) Green Community Schoolyards programme, the asphalt playgrounds of these schools will be transformed into parks and green spaces, starting from one school to the next.
Climate Adaptation Platform
A thermometer showing high temperatures. A city is blurred in the background.
Update

How traffic increases urban heat stress

Waste heat from cars, together with sealed road and car park surfaces, contributes to the generation of urban heat. This affects the quality of life and poses a health risk. As temperatures rise, it is time to act.
VCÖ
Green city with multiple green roofs
Update

Cool roofs are best at beating cities’ heat

Painting roofs white or covering them with a reflective coating would be more effective at cooling cities like London than vegetation-covered “green roofs,” street-level vegetation or solar panels, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.
University College London
Update

Summer in the city: Climate science reveals the impacts of heat

People who live in cities are particularly vulnerable to heat stress. More than half of the world’s population and 83 percent of the United States’ population lives in urban areas.
United States Department of Energy
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Documents and publications

A systematic review of urban heat island and heat waves research (1991–2022)

This review provides a comprehensive, accessible and structured overview of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) and Heat Waves (HWs) topic as a support for a better understanding of the gaps to be addressed by future research.
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Documents and publications

Unlivable: What the urban heat island effect means for East Asia's cities

The urban heat island (UHI) effect, especially when considered together with climate change, represents a serious and growing threat to the competitiveness, livability, and inclusiveness of East Asia’s cities.
Turin heat island effect
Blog
Daniele Berruti

Can Turin beat the heat? The socioeconomic factors at play in the urban heat island effect in an Italian city

To better understand the implementation of a micro-scale urban heat island risk assessment, researchers conducted a study using Turin as a subject – the first time that such an in-depth methodology is applied in any Italian city.
Update

As the Earth gets hotter, can our cities get cooler?

At the global scale, people in developing countries, particularly in South Asia, Africa and East Asia, who have contributed the least to cause climate change and do not have the resources to adapt are expected to have their health impacted the most.
World Resources Institute
Children playing with water in fountain in Harbour drive in downtown San Diego.
Research briefs

Strategic city planning can help reduce urban heat island effect

The tendency of cities to trap heat — a phenomenon called the “urban heat island,” often referred to as the UHI effect — can lead to dangerous temperatures in the summer months, but new research suggests that certain urban factors can reduce this effect.
Pennsylvania State University
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Documents and publications

Micro-scale UHI risk assessment on the heat-health nexus within cities by looking at socio-economic factors and built environment characteristics: The Turin case study (Italy)

The objective of this study is to provide an empirical example of a flexible and replicable methodology to estimate the micro-scale Urban Heat Island (UHI) risks within an urban context which takes into account all the relevant elements.

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