869 Assessment of Thermal Comfort on the Spatial and Temporal Variability of the Urban Heat Island Intensity

Tuesday, 24 January 2017
4E (Washington State Convention Center )
Hyunsu Kim, Pusan National University, Busan, Korea, Republic of (South); and Y. K. Kim

The world is suffering from severe fatigue due to climate changes. In particular, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather (e.g. heat waves, heat stress) are significantly increasing every year in East Asia including southern area of Korea. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) in Korea, the number of patients with heat related illness in 2016 increased more twice than in previous years and the occurrence of deaths caused by the heat related illness was one month faster than last year (CDCP, 2016). CDCP has been predicting to continue this trend as the climate changes. So, it is important to know the correlation between thermal environments and thermal comfort.
 To know thermal environments, the spatial and temporal variability of the urban heat island (UHI) intensity was investigated using near surface temperature data measured at 16 automatic weather systems (AWS) during last 11-years (2000-2010) in Busan metropolitan area (BMA), Korea. Moreover, four indices related to the physiological environment (e.g. heat index (HI), wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT), physiological subjective temperature (PST), physiological strain (PhS)) were calculated through the MENEX (Man-Environment heat Exchange) model to evaluate thermal comfort during the same years.
 The area of maximum UHI intensity was generally shifted southward in the inner BMA (Figure 1). Meanwhile, the spatial distribution of some urban variations (e.g. urban land use, population-density and transportation) was changed during the same years (Figure 2). It means that the spatial and temporal differences of the UHI intensity have coincided with changes of land-use, population density and transportation in BMA. Whereas, the variability of thermal indices showing the thermal comfort was different from the changes of general thermal environments (e.g. UHI intensity) in BMA (Figure 3). Especially, some thermal indices (e.g. HI, PhS) of urban area (Busan) in BMA indicated higher than those of rural area.
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