jailcd2015076: Study on the Urban Heat Island and Its Relationship with Land Use in Tokyo

Abstract

Urban heat island (UHI) is a worldwide phenomenon, which causes many ecological and social consequences. Therefore, in order to understand quantitatively the mechanism of urban heat island (UHI) effect in the Tokyo metropolitan area and its relationship with land use/land cover change, this paper collected the meteorological data and analyzed the relationship between air temperature and distance to urban center; the variation of air temperature, tropical night days and midsummer days in different regions since the 1970s; the status quo of air temperature UHI. Finally, the relativity between air temperature and land use/land cover change was analyzed respectively from the overall and local scales. The results showed that the temperature in Tokyo has gone up by 1 degree on average during the last 30 years; the air temperature increases from the suburbs to the central area and there is an obvious UHI phenomenon; building land area and air temperature have a certain positive correlation, which reveals that the higher building land area coverage is, the higher the temperature is, natural surface area and air temperature have a significant negative correlation, meaning that the lower the natural surface area coverage is, the higher the temperature is, and vice versa.