Frontiers in Environmental Science (Sep 2021)
Combining High-Resolution Land Use Data With Crowdsourced Air Temperature to Investigate Intra-Urban Microclimate
Abstract
The spatial variability of land cover in cities results in a heterogeneous urban microclimate, which is often not represented with regulatory meteorological sensor networks. Crowdsourced sensor networks have the potential to address this shortcoming with real-time and fine-grained temperature measurements across cities. We use crowdsourced data from over 500 citizen weather stations during summer in Sydney, Australia, combined with 100-m land use and Local Climate Zone (LCZ) maps to explore intra-urban variabilities in air temperature. Sydney presents unique drivers for spatio-temporal variability, with its climate influenced by the ocean, mountainous topography, and diverse urban land use. Here, we explore the interplay of geography with urban form and fabric on spatial variability in urban temperatures. The crowdsourced data consists of 2.3 million data points that were quality controlled and compared with reference data from five synoptic weather stations. Crowdsourced stations measured higher night-time temperatures, higher maximum temperatures on warm days, and cooler maximum temperatures on cool days compared to the reference stations. These differences are likely due to siting, with crowdsourced weather stations closer to anthropogenic heat emissions, urban materials with high thermal inertia, and in areas of reduced sky view factor. Distance from the coast was found to be the dominant factor impacting the spatial variability in urban temperatures, with diurnal temperature range greater for sensors located inland. Further differences in urban temperature could be explained by spatial variability in urban land-use and land-cover. Temperature varied both within and between LCZs across the city. Crowdsourced nocturnal temperatures were particularly sensitive to surrounding land cover, with lower temperatures in regions with higher vegetation cover, and higher temperatures in regions with more impervious surfaces. Crowdsourced weather stations provide highly relevant data for health monitoring and urban planning, however, there are several challenges to overcome to interpret this data including a lack of metadata and an uneven distribution of stations with a possible socio-economic bias. The sheer number of crowdsourced weather stations available can provide a high-resolution understanding of the variability of urban heat that is not possible to obtain via traditional networks.
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