Monitoring and analysis of urban heat Island of Lahore city in Pakistan during winter season
Muhammad Basit,a✽ Khadija Shakrullah,b M. Mumtaz Ali Khanc
a Subject Specialist of Geography, Government Higher Secondary School Gujrat, Dist. Muzaffargarh – Pakistan. b Department of Geographiy, Forman Christian College (A Chartered University), Lahore – Pakistan. c National College of Business Administration and Economics (NCBA&E), Lahore – Pakistan.
Eur. J. Clim. Ch., Volume 1, Issue 1, pp. 24-31 (2019) Available online May 16th 2019
Abstract
The phenomenon of Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a result of various factors ranging from increase in urban built-up land to human activities and affected the climate in urban areas. Therefore, the main objectives of the current study are to monitor the temperature variations and assess UHI in Lahore city. In order to measure the UHI, the meteorological data was collected by installing Digital Weather Station WS-1080, at two selected sites, one at Mozang (urban site) and other at Sangra (rural site) from January 15 to 18, 2015 (4 days) in winter season. The results of the study reveal that notable variations of temperature were recorded between Mozang and Sangra. The mean day-time temperature (23.9°C) was higher at Sangra than Mozang (22.8°C). Whereas temperature at night-time was higher at Mozang and lower at Sangra. The R2 value of 0.0041 also demonstrates positive relationship between UHI and dew point at Mozang. The speed and direction of wind also influences the intensity of UHI. During the observational days, the range of UHI was 4.3°C to 6.2°C. Hence, the difference between the minimum and maximum temperature was almost 2°C and it highlighted that the UHI was enhancing. Lastly, few suggestions were proposed to mitigate the issue of UHI.