Temporal march of the Chicago heat island.

Abstract

Twenty years of records from Midway Airport, located within the City of Chicago, and Argonne National Laboratory, a rural site 23 km southwest of the airport, have been used to study the diurnal and seasonal variation in the Chicago urban heat island. As expected, there was an elevation in temperature within the city most of the time, averaging 1.85oC during nonprecipitating hours. The magnitude of the heat island was characterized by diurnal and seasonal cycles, which were modulated by cloud and wind conditions. -from Author