New ECOSTRESS and MODIS Land Surface Temperature Data Reveal Fine-Scale Heat Vulnerability in Cities: A Case Study for Los Angeles County, California

Abstract

Rapid 21st century urbanization combined with anthropogenic climate warming are significantly increasing heat-related health threats in cities worldwide. In Los Angeles (LA), increasing trends in extreme heat are expected to intensify and exacerbate the urban heat island effect, leading to greater health risks for vulnerable populations. Partnerships between city policymakers and scientists are becoming more important as the need to provide data-driven recommendations for sustainability and mitigation efforts becomes critical. Here we present a model to produce heat vulnerability index (HVI) maps driven by surface temperature data from National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) new Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) thermal infrared sensor. ECOSTRESS was launched in June 2018 with the capability to image fine-scale urban temperatures at a 70 m resolution throughout different times of the day and night. The HVI model further includes information on socio-demographic data, green vegetation abundance, and historical heatwave temperatures from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor onboard the Aqua spacecraft since 2002. During a period of high heat in July 2018, we identified the five most vulnerable communities at a sub-city block scale in the LA region. The persistence of high HVI throughout the day and night in these areas indicates a clear and urgent need for implementing cooling technologies and green infrastructure to curb future warming.

Urban Morphological Controls on Surface Thermal Dynamics: A Comparative Assessment of Major European Cities with a Focus on Athens, Greece

“…The intercomparison of multiple cities in this work suggests that a single direction of influence cannot be generalized; however, generally, H resulted in a weak or negative contribution to high daytime LST. This study also supports previous qualitative findings observing that the high-rise urban core was not the warmer part of the city by day: In Vancouver [112], Paris [113], Shanghai [20], Phoenix [114], London [115], and Los Angeles [116]. Finally, in [117], it was demonstrated that in several cases worldwide, LCZ 1-corresponding to neighborhoods with the higher building heights-had lower LST compared to other LCZ classes with similar building density but lower height.…”

Mapping Heat-Related Risks in Northern Jiangxi Province of China Based on Two Spatial Assessment Frameworks Approaches

“…After Zhang [ 8 ] and Hulley [ 17 ], the heat risk index was constructed by the multiplication of heat hazard, heat exposure, and heat vulnerability, and the HVI index was obtained according to the formula below. HVI = Exposure index (E) + Sensibility index (S) − Adaptability index (A) …”

“…Impaired workers' health can lead to a decline in human productivity and economic loss [50]; adaptation and preventive measures are needed for these working groups. The literature has shown that apparent temperatures are reliable for assessing the working environment [51], but most heat assessment research studies only consider air temperature and land surface temperature [12,17,52]. In this situation, this study introduced wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) as an indicator in heat risk assessment.…”

“…Constructing spatial heat risk indicators is an effective method for quantitative assessment. Several frameworks have been developed to create heat risk indicators, while the frequently used methods are multiplication-based Crichton’s risk triangle framework [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ] and summatory-based heat vulnerability index (HVI) framework [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]. Crichton’s risk assessment method has been used to assess flood hazards in the UK [ 24 ] and climate-related heat risks [ 25 ].…”

DIEGO: A Multispectral Thermal Mission for Earth Observation on the International Space Station

“…At the same time, a spatial resolution below 100 m is required for mapping at scale useful for urban applications (Sobrino, Oltra-Carrió, Sòria, Bianchi, & Paganini, 2012). ECOSTRESS on JAXA JEM the and a future DIEGO sensor on Bartolomeo are therefore well suited for this application as they allow to implement multispectral temperature/emissivity separation approaches, such as the TES (Gillespie et al, 1998), for retrieving most accurate LST (Hulley, Shivers, Wetherley, & Cudd, 2019) at high spatial resolution.…”