Orlando Florida's Urban Heat Island

The Southeast Regional Climate Center and the University of South Carolina are currently working on a joint project to study Orlando Florida’s urban heat island. Thirty temperature sensors sampling at five minute intervals have been installed in and around the Orlando Metropolitan area. These instruments have been accurately located using a Trimble Pro XR GPS unit operating in real time differential mode. This data was used to create a GIS point coverage of the network. In addition to data from these sensors, data from two Florida Automated Weather Network (FAWN) stations sampling at fifteen minute intervals and hourly data from the Orlando International Airport are also being used. Data from all of these sources will be entered into a GIS in order to interpolate continuous surfaces of Orlando’s temperature. The goal of this process is to provide insight to the character of Orlando’s heat island by observing a time series of these generated images.

The second goal of this study is to evaluate the utility of using Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) thermal data to study the urban heat island effect. The high temporal resolution of the in situ network will allow ground measurements to be taken within 2.5 minutes of satellite image acquisition. The continuous surface generated from the ground data will then be compared with the AVHRR image using difference measures and regression models.

I think the following theme best describes the focus of my paper: 2. Climatology and Long-Term Satellite Data Studies. Subject areas include temperature, water vapor, precipitation, snow and ice cover, trace gases, etc. (This theme will include a joint session with the 11th Symp on Global Change Studies.)