Urban heat island data by local weather types in Lisbon metropolitan area based on Copernicus climate variables dataset for European cities

Abstract

Here we provide Urban Heat Island (UHI) by local weather types (LWT) maps for the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA). These maps were produced from the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service climate variables dataset that contains hourly air temperature raster data for 100 European cities (2008-2017), namely Lisbon and part of its metropolitan area. Over 61000 maps (2008-2014) were extracted in NetCDF format and processed in geographic-information-systems (GIS). An urban mask was created from the recently updated Local Climate Zones (LCZ) classification for this area and a cell of the LCZ class “Low Plants” (non-urban) was chosen to calculate the temperature difference. UHI intensity was estimated using an R script. The outputs of this process were divided by thermal seasons and LWT. Ultimately, average UHI intensity by LWT was estimated. Average UHI according to meteorological conditions is available in GeoTIFF raster format (Appendix 1), with a spatial resolution of 100 × 100m pixels, as well as hourly average UHI for each LWT (Appendix 2 to 16). This data may provide valuable information for urban planners, designers and architects in the process of pinpointing recurrent hot and cool spots/neighborhoods in the city and its heating/cooling degrees. Moreover, these maps may contribute to a construction of an early warning system that anticipates which weather conditions we might expect an significant increase in thermal discomfort on those critical areas in the city. © 2022