Climate & Sustainability Implications of Land Use Alterations in an Urbanizing Region: Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina

Abstract

Urban climate is the most immediate manifestation of the warming global climate for the majority of people on earth. Nearly half of those people live in small to medium sized cities, an understu-died scale in urban climate research. Widespread characterization would be useful to decision makers in planning and design for land use decisions. Using a multi-method approach, the mesos-cale UHI in the study region is characterized and the secular trend over the last sixty years evaluated. Under isolated ideal conditions the findings indicate a UHI of 5.3˚C ± 0.97˚C to be present in the study area, the magnitude of which is growing over time.