Issues with using Landsat based Surface Temperature for Investigating Linkage between Local Climate Zones and Surface Urban Heat Island in Different Seasons: A Case Study of Manhattan, N.Y.
This study was conceptualized to investigate differences in surface temperature profile of Local Climate Zones (LCZ) classes in different seasonal conditions. Manhattan was selected as case study due to its dense, but heterogeneous built-up profile and presence of green area which formed the baseline for temperature comparison. However, this study failed to find significant results, in terms of the distinct Urban Heat Island (UHI) feature often reported in literature. Instead, this study suggests that in the case of Manhattan UHI is predominantly within ± 0.5 C° except during summer season. In summer season, where more difference in built and green LCZ is observed, the noise in data, defined by standard deviation of surface temperature in the class, is also higher. Thus, our study concludes that Landsat based surface temperature should be used with extreme caution to investigate UHI since most imagery is taken during day time.