Urban Heat Island: Dynamic Simulation, Assessment and Measuring Mitigation in Cities of Extreme Dry Weather

Abstract

Increasing urbanization in the cities of northern Mexico reflects a general trend to increased temperatures, so it is likely that heat waves amplify the frequency and intensity in urban centers, mainly located in arid and semiarid as Mexicali city with extremely arid climate, very hot in summer and cold and rainy in winter. Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico is located at N32º38' and W115º20'. The urban area is expanded over 14,890 hectares, with a population rise the 689,775. In the last four decades has experienced an accelerated industrial growth and mismatched land uses, for example: most of the industrial parks were established before the 1980 in what was the outskirts of the city, but nowadays practically are inside of the urban area contributing to the increase the urban temperature. The heat islands profile shows that are intensified in industrial areas as well as trade and services. The preliminary scenarios of climate change for Mexicali indicate that for the decade of 2080 the temperature will increase between 4.2°C and 4.4°C. This paper addresses in a simulation context, an industrial and commercial city sector and their ability to implement urban heat island mitigation strategies. The simulation of this process requires several spatial analysis tools and specific knowledge about the processes that increase urban temperatures. In this work, only land use, land cover and buildings are considered. The proposed method takes into account the actual spatial organization to analyze trends for the proposed growth areas.

A Study on Urban Heat Island (UHI): Challenges and Opportunities for Mitigation

“…Furthermore, the presence of green spaces such as gardens and plant-filled areas assists in curbing the localized temperature increase by promoting evaporation and subsequent surface cooling. 63…”