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.

High-quality, standardized urban canopy layer observations are a worldwide necessity for urban climate and air quality research and monitoring. The Schools Weather and Air Quality (SWAQ) network was developed and distributed across the Greater Sydney region with a view to establish a citizen-centred network for investigation of the intra-urban heterogeneity and inter-parameter dependency of all major urban climate and air quality metrics. The network comprises a matrix of eleven automatic weather stations, nested with a web of six automatic air quality stations, stretched across 2779 km2, with average spacing of 10.2 km. Six meteorological parameters and six air pollutants are recorded. The network has a focus on Sydney’s western suburbs of rapid urbanization, but also extends to many eastern coastal sites where there are gaps in existing regulatory networks. Observations and metadata are available from September 2019 and undergo routine quality control, quality assurance and publication. Metadata, original datasets and quality-controlled datasets are open-source and available for extended academic and non-academic use.