Urban Heat Islands - some research published 7/14/21

[Hurricane Agnes]

I saw Accuweather had an article on research done to look at the phenomena of the "urban heat island" - https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/how-these-5-cities-became-the-most-intense-urban-heat-islands/981815

The data came from an independent climate research organization named "Climate Central" - a group of scientists and journalists who do deep dives into weather-related climate data and release reports.  In this case, one of the researcher's schools partners with NOAA to contribute their data to them.

This particular report is here - https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/urban-heat-islands where they took a look at 159 cities across all 50 states and applied similar methodology originally developed by other researchers who had come up with a model to measure, evaluate, and generate what they dubbed an "urban heat intensity" value (used for select European cities based on the prevalence or absence of certain features including population, building heights/density, greenspace, etc.) - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75018-4

Their report brief is here (PDF) - https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/uploads/general/2021_UHI_Report.pdf 

The generic graphic of how they categorize environments is this -

Accuweather posted the top 5 "urban heat islands" and the Climate Central site posted the top 20. Philly (and I suppose that might mean some its immediate adjoining rim communities) was in neither the "top 5" nor the "top 20" list.   The higher the value, the more intense the heat island.

So I had to dig and dig and did find a link to their data graphic and you can select a city here - https://www.climatecentral.org/outreach/alert-archive/2021/2021UHI.html (and the link includes the CSV spreadsheet file for the list of the cities and ranking).  

From the raw numerical list, Philly came in (alphabetically) at #37 and they had an option to generate a graphic - 

In actuality (looking at the spreadsheet list), since many of the cities were "tied" with other cities based on their scores (in our case listed as "6.29" in the spreadsheet and rounded up to 6.3 on the graphic), we were tied with 7 other cities for 13th place (if you group the ties and re-number).  Renumbering based on lumping each of the groups of ties in their own single rank, yields a total of 21 rank slots.  Interestingly, there were something like 62 cities tied for 15th place (with the rank renumbering).

Believe it or not, using Climate Central's straight numeric ranking (not counting ties), Erie ended up in the top 20 and was the only PA city that showed up in that top 20. Using the renumbering would make it #9.  Allentown came in at #40 (or #14 renumbered) -

and Pittsburgh came in at #45 (tied with Allentown for a renumbered #14).  For both NJ and DE, they only had 1 city each evaluated - Newark, NJ (#2 and also a renumbered #2) and Wilmington, DE (#27 or renumbered #11) -

(*note that I am only displaying the graphics for the Philly Metro /Mt. Holly NWS cities)

[FPizz]

Thanks.  Newarks #'s are always out of control based on surrounding numbers, but some in the NY forum take them as gospel and post them constantly.  

[Hurricane Agnes]

17 minutes ago, FPizz said:

Thanks.  Newarks #'s are always out of control based on surrounding numbers, but some in the NY forum take them as gospel and post them constantly.  

I think a lot of where you see this issue too is with "port" cities in general that still have significant industrial land areas with sprawling facilities strung along the waterfronts.  Those facilities generate jobs but they are rarely "landscaped" to include some green space.  I think they are trying to remedy some of that down here across the river with Camden's waterfront that still has its docks and piers, but with some added park development around them (e.g., near the old RCA building that has been converted and the Campbell Soup factories that were imploded some time ago) -

 

 

Here in Philly, William Penn envisioned a "Greene Countrie Towne", including four "Squares" as parks in the original city design -

The squares are all still there almost 340 years later. But even with that, the industrial age came full bore and the city managed to keep them up and expanded them as the city expanded, while the industrial waste and pollution were killing our 2 rivers. Fortunately efforts were made to clean and begin to restore the rivers, and they continue to add more green areas.

The one significant thing that I recall almost 20 years ago, was a work training trip to San Francisco, and the plane circling over the city before landing.  I had never in my life seen an area so built-on and lacking trees than San Francisco.  On the street level, yeah you have some street trees (mostly eucalyptus and old magnolias) but outside of Golden Gate Park (their equivalent to Central Park), it was jarring.  Many of us here in Philly metro are under flight paths and if you have been on a plane circling overhead, you do see lots of wooded areas, particularly over the rim counties. But there, nope.  Even NYC (not even counting Central Park) has the more "residential" boroughs with trees and little parks.