Summer- and Wintertime Variations of the Surface and Near-Surface Urban Heat Island in a Semiarid Environment

This work examines the summer and wintertime variations of the surface and near-
surface Urban Heat Island (UHI) using the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature, near-surface meteorological
observations, and the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model for the Phoenix
metropolitan area. The land surface UHI is found to be high at night for both summer and
wintertime periods but increases during the hot season. WRF-simulations were performed
with the multilayer building energy model coupled to the Noah-MP land surface model
(Salamanca et al. 2018) at high spatial resolution (1 km) and properly represented the
distinct seasonal variations of both UHIs but reduced errors were computed during the
summer season. Finally, regression analysis is used to explore the correlation between
surface UHI and daily insolation and atmospheric stability. A previous effort (Cui Y.-Y.
and B. de Foy, 2012) motivated this work.