Masterclass: Understanding, Modeling, and Mitigating Urban Heat Islands

This 3-part Masterclass includes a rapid review of what’s known about urban heat islands, and provide insights into considerations for choosing interventions to manage them.

Participants learned about the Urban Heat Island effect Tool tip The UHI effect is caused by cities replacing the heat buffering ecosystem services afforded by soil and vegetative evapotranspiration with heat-absorbing materials, wind-blocking & radiation trapping structures, and waste-heat from air conditioning, automobiles, and other sources. In some cases, this effect can drive temperature differentials of 10 degrees Celsius – from the urban core to the exurban periphery, but also within urban areas from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. – what causes it, how we map and model it, and what we can do about it. 

This masterclass series is complementary to the NASA ARSET Training: Satellite Remote Sensing for Urban Heat Islands, which ran in November 2020, and for which course materials are available online.

Target Audiences: Interested experts may include urban planners, designers, architects, sustainability/resilience officers, city government officials, urban climate scientists and other researchers.

Part 1: Understanding Urban Heat: Urban Climate Science Background

Part 2: Building Capacity and Awareness: Community Engagement & Empowerment

Part 3: Managing Urban Heat: Interventions and Evaluation