A Reconnaissance Experiment in Mapping and Modeling the Effect of Land Use on Urban Thermal Regimes

A simple digital climate simulator was modified for the simulation of land-use-de-pendent surface thermal contrast in urban terrain. The simulations were tested using thermal maps acquired at 1144 and 0252 EST over Ann Arbor, Mich. These maps were sampled to assign mean temperatures to four terrain blocks (i.e., farmland, city center, new subdivisions,, and old residential). It was discovered that the relative thermal rank (hot to cold) was correctly evaluated by the simulator at the test periods and the largest relative simulation error was only 13% of the diurnal thermal range at these times.