Assessment of land surface temperature and urban heat island using remote sensing in the Kurdistan region, Iraq

Urban heat island (UHI) is a prevalent environmental hazard in modern cities, with higher surface and air temperatures than adjacent rural regions. The current study assessed the spatiotemporal distribution of land surface temperature (LST) in Iraq's Kurdistan region and the existence of urban heat islands during the daytime and at nighttime. The land surface temperature (LST) was composited from 2001 to 2024 using the historical Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Terra satellite 8. The average LSTs of the rural and arid regions were contrasted with the average LSTs of the urban and suburban areas in three governorates of the study area, namely Erbil, Sulimaniyah, and Duhoke. Daytime and nighttime LST were also compared. The results revealed that the highest values of LST occurred in the urban region of the southern parts of the study area, where the mean value was 32.2 0C during the daytime. During the summer, Erbil had a higher temperature of 49.5 0C, while Sulimaniyah had the lowest (0.98 0C). According to annual data, almost 80% of the study region had an NLST score of 0.6 or 0.7. The biggest difference in LST mean value between urban and suburban regions was recorded in the summer daytime in Erbil city, with a value of 5.1 0C, while the smallest variances were reported in the fall season for all governorates in the study area, reaching 0.01 0C at night in Sulimaniyah city.