Climatological analysis of urban heat island effects in Swiss cities

Abstract

This work presents a high-resolution spatiotemporal analysis of the urban heat island (UHI) effect in Swiss cities during the last 6 years. The entire alpine country is simulated at once using the COSMO model at 1.1 km resolution, validated against a dense national measurement network. Additionally, the bulk parametrisation TERRA URB is used to model the dynamical and thermal effects of urban areas. The resulting data allows us to perform the first comprehensive analysis over the entire Switzerland, with a focus on the UHI effect with intra-urban and across cities comparisons, and to report on the current state of urban warming. Despite the medium-small size of the cities, the UHI is of considerable magnitude especially when considering peak values in ideal weather conditions. The present results confirm previous analyses performed for individual cities, and shed new light on the country-wide picture by highlighting features such as the marked seasonality of the UHI intensity as well as the influence of local climate and topographical features on the urban climate. A thorough discussion is also presented highlighting the absence of simple relationships between UHI intensity and bulk city parameters and weather patterns.