Identification

Title

Understanding the impact of urban expansion and lake shrinkage on summer climate and human thermal comfort in a land-water mosaic area

Abstract

Wuhan has witnessed unprecedented urban expansion that encroached upon sizable inland lakes. However, the impacts of urban expansion on climate and heat stress for such a city with complex physiographic background (land-water mosaics) remain understudied. Using a coupled urban-lake-atmospheric model, we first examined summer climate responses to urban expansion and lake shrinkage in Wuhan during 2000-2020. Second, multiple heat stress indicators were used to evaluate human thermal comfort in different contexts of interest. Results showed that the presence of water bodies reduced daytime maximum temperature, raised nighttime minimum temperature, and increased moisture content in urban and built-up areas. Urban expansion alone led to summer warming of 0.9 degrees C and drying of 0.9 g/kg, with local peak warming and drying up to 2 degrees C and 1.4 g/kg. In comparison, urban expansion with lake shrinkage showed a reduced magnitude of warming of 0.8 degrees C and increased magnitude of drying of 1.6 g/kg, with the maximum changes up to 1.4 degrees C and 2.0 g/kg. The presence of water bodies reduced while urban expansion increased the frequency of occurrence of yellow and orange heat alert days; however, both increased the number of days exerting high thermal risks on outdoor workers and those days that were dangerous for outdoor pedestrians. Our study underlined that both urban expansion and water body existence exerted a strong influence on summer climate and heat stress in Wuhan, and highlighted that mitigation measures should be taken to alleviate the deleterious impacts of high temperature and humidity on human health.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7d50rn6

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2022-06-16T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

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name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact