To further evaluate the factors influencing public heat and air-quality health, a characterization of how urban areas affect the thermal environment, particularly in terms of the air temperature, is necessary. To assist public health agencies in ranking urban areas in terms of heat stress and developing mitigation plans or allocating various resources, this study characterized urban heat in Cal...

In this study we examine the Urban Heat Island (UHI) of Granada. First, we perform a study of the evolution of the recorded temperatures at a meteorological station over the last century. In this record, the minimum temperatures increase while the maximum temperatures decrease. We also compare both rural and urban temperature records, obtaining the UHI fluctuations on a smaller time scale. The ...

Heat waves are projected to become more frequent, longer-lasting, and intense. At the same time, urban areas are confronted with the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon, which adds to the thermal stress experienced during hot spells. Focusing on the Paris area during the hot summer of 2003, we investigated the influence of heat waves on UHI intensity, i.e., the urban-rural temperature contrast. ...

In order to make urban climate predictions at the city-scale and on long term experiment accessible to communities such as building engineers or urban planners, a method to calculate meteorological forcing for surface models is presented. This method is computed with weather data files from an operational measurement station outside of the city. The model, called the spatialized urban weather g...

It has long been known that the urban surface energy balance is different to that of a rural surface, and that heating of the urban surface after sunset gives rise to the Urban Heat Island (UHI). Less well known is how flow and turbulence structure above the urban surface are changed during different phases of the urban boundary layer (UBL). This paper presents new observations above both an ur...

Current life history theory suggests that the allocation of energetic resources between competing physiological needs should be dictated by an individual's longevity and pace of life. One key physiological pathway likely to contribute to the partitioning of resources is the vertebrate stress response. By increasing circulating glucocorticoids the stress response can exert a suite of physiologic...

Urban endocrine ecology aims to understand how organisms cope with new sources of stress and maintain allostatic load to thrive in an increasingly urbanized world. Recent research efforts have yielded controversial results based on short-term measures of stress, without exploring its fitness effects. We measured feather corticosterone (CORTf, reflecting the duration and amplitude of glucocortic...

The rapid increase of impervious surfaces and the dense development that accompanies urban growth has reduced the amount of green space in urban landscapes and increased urban surface temperatures. Accordingly, the greening of urban spaces has been proposed as one approach to mitigating urban heat island (UHI) effects. To find the most practical green space design for reducing land surface temp...

Soil temperature (tB) was determined down to 2 m below ground level at 8 locations in the city of Oberhausen, Ruhr area, Germany, between August 2010 and July 2011 to investigate the subsurface urban heat island (SUHI) and its impact on drinking water quality. The soil temperatures obtained in Oberhausen demonstrate typical location-dependent behaviour. At the depth of drinking water pipes (1 t...

Anthropogenic noise can have important physiological and behavioral effects on wild animals. For example, urban noise could lead to a state of chronic stress and could alter the development of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Supporting this hypothesis, several studies have found that human disturbance is associated with increased circulating corticosterone (CORT) levels. However,...