Urban Greenery
Urban Greenery
Urban Greenery
KEY WORDS: Urban Greenery, Nighttime Urban Heat Island, LST, Health, Landsat 8, Sentinel 2, Metropolitan Area of Barcelona
ABSTRACT:
Global warming is causing increasing Heat Waves that affect human health. High temperatures markedly increase morbidity and
mortality. Urban Heat Islands increase the effects of Heat Waves and are a serious inconvenience to human health and comfort. Cities
can substantially increase local temperatures and reduce temperature drop at night. During the night, the greater thermal inertia of the
central areas reduces their cooling capacity. On the other hand, it is important to highlight that urban vegetation plays a key role in
adapting cities to Global Warming and Urban Heat Island. Green areas have lower temperatures than the rest of land uses and generate
a cooling effect that spreads to their surroundings creating a "cool island" effect. The main objective of this paper is to establish the
nocturnal land surface temperature and land surface air temperature of Barcelona Metropolitan Area (35 municipalities, 636 km2, 3.3
million inhabitants) in an episode of a nocturnal heatwave and to estimate its possible impact on health and mortality. Subsequently,
nighttime temperatures are analysed in this extreme heat context to determine their spatial distribution and detect the urban landscapes
that are most vulnerable to extreme night heat. Modelling of land surface temperature must reveal the elements that determine night
Urban Heat Island and consequently identify actions that can be implemented at urban planning level to refresh the environment during
the night and thus increase the resilience of the most vulnerable landscapes and improve residents’ health. This paper studies the effect
of urban greenery and green infrastructures on Nighttime Urban Heat Island and propose climate adaptation measures and design for
urban green areas to decrease high temperature in a Heat Wave context, which contributes to reducing the serious negative impacts on
people's health.
* Corresponding author.
the effects of UHI become more apparent, due to the low cooling This paper seeks to determine the nocturnal land surface and air
capacity of urban construction materials and is during nighttime temperature in a period of maximum nighttime heat (summer
that temperatures can cause higher health risks. However, the 2015). So, this research aims to develop a nighttime land surface
study of nocturnal UHIs is still poorly developed, due to the air temperature (NLSAT) model by merging information from
structural problems regarding the availability of land surface Landsat, MODIS and information from meteorological stations
temperature (LST) and land surface air temperature (LSAT) data in order to study the contribution Night Urban Heat Island
for night time. Traditional methods for obtaining nocturnal UHI (NUHI) in episodes of heat wave. Given the practical identity that
have been directed either to extrapolation of data from weather exists (at night) between air temperature (that is, that experienced
stations, or obtaining air temperatures through urban transects. In by humans) and the temperature of the earth's surface (obtained
the first case, the lack of weather stations in urban landscapes by remote sensing), the study of the nocturnal LST is of great
makes it extremely difficult to obtain data to extrapolate and importance in thermal stress events derived from Night Heat
propose models at a detailed resolution scale. In the second case, Waves (NHW).
there is a manifest difficulty in obtaining data simultaneously and
significantly representative of urban and rural zones. On the other hand, it is important to highlight that urban
vegetation plays a key role in adapting cities to climate change.
The use of satellite images has helped considerably to understand Greenery increases air humidity and due to the green canopy the
UHI, especially in analyses of daytime land surface temperature shaded areas. Such characteristics break the UHI continuum,
(LST). However, available nighttime sensors have a major which is the rise in temperature that cities present, partly, because
limitation: their low spatial resolution does not allow detailed of high absorption of direct sun-heat in artificial surfaces. Thus,
analysis of nighttime UHI. In general, few studies have focused green areas have lower temperatures than the rest of land uses
on studying nocturnal UHI, due to the lack of information on and generate a cooling effect that spreads to their surroundings
LST. MODIS and Sentinel 3, for example, have a spatial creating a "cool island" effect (Bowler et al, 2010).
resolution of 1000 meters/pixel, which is generally insufficient
for the analysis of the spatial distribution of the UHI, which has The cooling effect of parks is quantified by the extent limit,
led to the need to downscale said spatial resolution (Mahour et which is the maximum distance reached by the cooling spread
al, 2017; Guzinski et al, 2020). High resolution thermal images outside boundaries of the park; and the intensity, which is the
(Landsat, for example) are limited to daytime information. In difference in temperature between the park and a certain urban
general, few studies have focused on studying Nocturnal Urban space in its near surroundings (Spronken-Smith & Oke, 1998).
Heat Island [NUHI], due to the lack of information on nighttime There is a consensus on the calculation of the cooling intensity,
thermal imagery (Arellano & Roca, 2021). The study of the but with slight differences on the spatial attribution of the
nocturnal LST is of great importance in heat stress events derived temperature to the park and the one that represents the urban
from Night Heat Waves. space. Previous investigations pointed that the cooling extent of
parks between 3 and 200 ha size, is in the 50 to 300 meters (m)
Furthermore, the integration of LST (obtained from remote range, but larger parks go from 200 to 2000m. Whereas the
sensing imagery) with LSAT (obtained from weather stations) cooling intensity registers values between 1 to 4°C during day
continues to be a pending challenge. The right estimation of the and 2 to 5°C at night (Kuttler, 2012), with an average intensity
temperature of the air at ≈ 2-m height above ground (LSAT) from between 0.94 and 1.15°C (Bowler et al, 2010).
LST is possible but complex. The vertical lapse rate to be applied
is function of the surface energy balance, which varies in function From this perspective, the research aims, through the use of
of the nature of the surface and of the instant of the day, as also remote sensing, to quantify the influence of the physical
of advection, adiabatic processes, turbulence and latent heat characteristics of urban parks and their surroundings to improve
fluxes, all of them affected by cloud cover, water vapour content the criteria of climate-sensitive urban design and planning and
and vegetation (Benali, 2012). At night, however, there is a reduce risks for the health of its inhabitants during extreme heat
greater homogenization of advection and adiabatic processes, waves. In this context, the paper studies the effect of urban
which represents less complexity in the modeling of air greenery and green infrastructures on night-time UHI in
temperatures. The large differences between land surface and air Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (MAB, fig. 1), and propose
temperatures during the day tend to moderate at night, with the climate adaptation measures and design for urban green areas to
LST and LSAT converging notably, especially in summer. decrease high temperature in a Heat Wave context, which
contributes to reducing the serious negative impacts on people's
Air temperature estimated from satellite measurements would health.
solve the weather stations scarcity in wider regions, where the
geospatial interpolation methods cannot provide accurate
estimations. In this way, LSAT estimation becomes of crucial
importance to solve spatial gaps for a wide range of applications,
in such a way that it is accepted that TIR produces better LSAT
estimations than those obtained by interpolating ground-station
temperatures (Mendelsohn et al, 2007). There is significant
literature that has deepened on how to obtain the air temperature
from MODIS LST. For example, the construction of multiple
regression models with air temperature as the dependent variable
and daytime and nighttime LSTs, along with other variables such
as altitude, longitude, latitude, distance to the sea, NDVI or
albedo, as independent variables (Serra et al, 2020). However,
there are few studies that have managed to increase the resolution
of the air temperature models, due to the low resolution of the Figure 1. Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (with municipalities)
data provided by MODIS or Sentinel 3 (Arellano et al, 2021).
2. METHODOLOGY was used instead of summer NDVI, as it better represents
the degree of vegetation at ground level. The tree canopy
The methodology used can be summarized as follows: plays a smaller role due to the deciduous nature of the trees
in the study area. At night, when solar radiation is non-
1. First of all, the heat waves experienced in the city of existent, long-wave radiation from the ground is not
Barcelona are studied, in order to determine the most significantly affected by the tree canopy.
appropriate period to carry out the analysis of the LST and
the LSAT. There is no universal definition of a heatwave, 4. Modeling the spatial distribution of the LST. The
but extreme events associated with particularly hot, methodology used in this work has been to develop a
sustained temperatures have been known to have a notable "hybrid" OLS model, with geographical (longitude, latitude,
impact on human mortality, regional economies and altitude, slope, orientation and distance to the sea) and
ecosystems. In this paper, we use the concept of heatwave urban-territorial (such as NDVI, NDBI, albedo,
applied by the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET). imperviousness, land covers, …) explanatory variables. The
In this definition, a heatwave is considered an episode of at MODIS LST is also included in the model. Said "hybrid"
least three consecutive days in which at least 10% of the model enables not only LST downscaling (from 1000
stations that are considered register maximums above the meters, MODIS, to 30 meters, Landsat), but also the
95% percentile of the series of maximum daily temperatures possible application to other moments in time to those of the
for the months of July and August from the period 1971 to date of acquisition of the image.
2000. However, this definition has a major limitation: it 5. On the other hand, directly modeling the existing
refers only to maximum temperatures, not minimum ones. information on the land surface air temperature resulting
As indicated, it is the high minimum temperatures that make from the meteorological stations. The LSAT is obtained (for
the most difference for health purposes. Maximum the date of the Landsat 8 image) based on the methodology
temperatures can have serious consequences, especially on developed by (Serra et al, 2020). The daily MOD11A1 LST
heat stroke. However, the health effects are more measured by MODIS Terra, including daytime (LSTd) and
pronounced in the case of night heat, where the inability to nighttime (LSTn) with 1 km2 spatial resolution, has been
rest (especially in homes without air conditioning, as is used in this study. Besides Satellite variables LSTd, LSTn,
generally the case in in Spain) can cause significant NDVI and NDBI, other six geographical and topographic
worsening of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases that variables are considered: latitude, longitude, distance to
produce a high proportion of premature deaths. For this coast, altitude, orientation and slope of the terrain for every
reason, in this study we differentiate between heatwaves meteorological station and pixel. Furthermore, the calendar
during the day (DHW) and at night (NHW), paying special day (cd) has been transformed into a new calendar day (cd*)
attention to the latter. according to a cosinus transformation (equation 1). These
2. The second step of the study consisted of determining the variables are used to fit an OLS model, with the air
nighttime LST of Barcelona in a heatwave. August 2015 temperatures obtained from the meteorological stations as
was chosen since it had temperatures that were higher than the dependent variable. This model makes it possible to
the average of the preceding years. There were various day know (at a resolution of 1 km / pixel) the spatial distribution
and night heatwaves. This date was also selected due to the of the air temperature.
availability of night thermal images (bands 10 and 11) of 2𝜋(𝑐𝑑 − 𝑐𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑥 )
Landsat 8, which allow the night LST of Barcelona 𝑐𝑑 ∗ = cos (1)
365
Metropolitan Area to be obtained in detail. The day and
night images of Landsat 8 from 3 and 28 August 2015 were 6. Once the air temperature model developed from the
used, complemented by the night image of 13 September meteorological stations has been obtained, said model can
2015 (to achieve adequate exclusion of areas covered by be merged with the information resulting from the high-
clouds). resolution satellite sensors (Landsat 8). In this way, the UHI
derived from the air temperature can be visualized in much
3. The estimation of LST from band 10 of Landsat 8 was more detail. Therefore, to downscale the multiregression
carried out according to the abundant existing literature on model developed in section 5, the variables (NDVI, NDBI,
the matter. However, the estimation of nighttime land LSTn, albedo, ...) are used at a resolution of 30 m/p
surface temperature by Landsat thermal bands is not a trivial (obtained from Landsat).
question. The most commonly used methodology to
determine daytime LST is based on estimating the 7. The study of the spatial distribution of the Urban Heat Island
emissivity of the land from its degree of vegetation: the of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area in August 2015 will
normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) threshold allow determining the health risk posed by high
(Sobrino et al, 2008). But this method has significant temperatures derived from heat waves.
limitations at night. The NDVI overvalues vegetation when
8. Determine the green areas of the MAB through the use of
it considers the canopy of trees. This overestimation is not a
remote sensing (Sentinel 2), as well as study the degree of
serious problem during the day, when the shade of trees
urban greenery of the different landscapes. Sentinel 2 offers
limits the incident radiation on the ground. However, it is
a higher spatial resolution (10 meters/pixel) than Landsat 8
critical at night. At night, the application of the standard
(30 m/p), which helps to more accurately delimit green
method for determining emissivity underestimates the land
spaces. NDVI has been used as an indicator of vegetation
surface radiation in areas with abundant tree vegetation. The
quality. Spaces with a surface area greater than 1,000 m2 and
result is critical on the streets and in parks with a significant
an NDVI greater than or equal to 0.3 have been considered
degree of canopy. For this reason, this paper used the
"urban parks".
methodology suggested by (Arellano & Roca, 2021) to
estimate the degree of vegetation and soil moisture. Based 9. And finally, model the effect of greenery in the nocturnal
on this estimation, the emissivity was determined and UHI as well as quantify the effect that the increase in green
consequently the nocturnal LST. In this paper, winter NDVI
spaces (measured by greenery characteristics and distance As we have previously indicated, it is during the night when
to parks) would have on temperature regulation. excess temperature can generate more negative effects on health,
causing an increase in premature deaths. Using the daily
mortality data for Barcelona provided by the Barcelona Public
3. RESULTS Health Agency (ASPB), from January 1 to December 31, 2018,
this study seeks to assess the effects of high temperatures on
3.1 Heatwaves and Mortality premature mortality. Figure 3 shows the daily deaths in the city
of Barcelona in relation to the minimum temperatures (Tm). The
Figure 2 shows the (official) weather stations existing in the minimum temperature threshold that marks the minimum deaths
Barcelona Metropolitan Area. Among them stands out, due to its is located at 21.3ºC.
high temperatures, the Raval station.
Figure 2. Weather stations A total of 852 days between 2007 and 2018 experienced night
temperatures above 21.3 degrees, which represented an increase
The European Union’s Copernicus program highlights two in mortality that can be estimated at 995 additional deaths in the
climatic indicators: summer days, when the temperatures exceed same period. Between 20 and 23.86 degrees Celsius (the limit at
25 degrees, and tropical nights, when the minimum temperature which a nocturnal heatwave is identified), the increase in
does not drop below 20 degrees. For the period of 1971 to 2020, mortality is very low (1 additional death). However, above this
the Raval was the weather station with the highest number of limit, mortality multiplies exponentially: at 25 degrees (the
summer days per year: 114.04. Almost four months/year were threshold that we call a torrid night) there are 2.81 additional
summer days. Regarding tropical nights, the Raval on average deaths, which increases to 5.83, 10.98, 19.34, 32.27 and 51.57 for
between 1971 and 2020 reached 66.94 nights or over 2 months a each additional degree. The warming forecasts for the Barcelona
year. area, established in the previous subsection and in the event of no
human adaptation to the climate (and the massive installation of
The application of the criteria for defining heatwaves in air conditioning systems in homes), may lead to a very marked
Barcelona, which is at least 3 consecutive days with a maximum increase in premature mortality due to night heat.
temperature (DHW) or a minimum temperature (NHW) higher
than the 95th percentile for the months of July and August in the 3.2 Nighttime LST
period 1971 to 2000, gave us the thresholds of 32.49ºC by day
and 23.86ºC by night for Raval station (located in the old city). To proceed with the analysis of daytime and nighttime LST,
Applying these thresholds, 18 daytime heatwaves would have Landsat 8 images relative to the month of August 2015 were used
been produced in the center of Barcelona, with 76 extremely hot (8/3, 8/28). To obtain a completely cloud-free image of the study
days between 1971 and 2020. The Raval station would have area, the night thermal images of 8/28 and 9/13 were combined.
endured 70 nighttime heatwaves and 577 very hot nights (table Figure 4 compares the August 2015 AMB LST day and night
1). images from MODIS and Landsat.
Years NHW HN
1971-1980 0 3
1981-1990 4 28
1991-2000 8 66
2001-2010 24 192
2011-2020 34 288
Total 70 577
Table 1. Nighttime Heat Waves and Hot Nights (Raval)