Urban Heat Islands in a Warming World: Remote Sensing Insights and Mitigation Frameworks

Abstract

Urban Heat Islands (UHI) are a significant environmental challenge in rapidly urbanizing cities, exacerbated by climate change and urbanization. The UHI effect causes the high temperatures of urban regions, causing high energy consumption, health hazards, and degradation of the environment. Remote sensing technology has found it invaluable to monitor and control UHI because it has been used to give spatially continuous data of land surface temperatures, vegetation, and urban morphology. This review paper summarizes the recent innovations in remote sensing techniques of UHI monitoring, empirical evidence of the UHI trends in various climates, and mitigation and adaptation strategies based on remote sensing. Also, it determines the gaps in the existing research, namely the data integration, mixed-pixel issues, and the socio-political barriers, and points out the emerging technologies that suggest potential solutions. The article ends by suggesting an all-encompassing model of urban heat resilience comprising remote sensing, urban planning, and fair policy formulation in tackling the increasing UHI issues amid global warming.