Urban heat island in Erbil City

Sammanfattning: Popular science Most cities have been growing and developing at an accelerated rate throughout the world, in both developing and developed countries. Urban growth and development removes the natural land cover and replaces it with a new cover of manmade features (e.g. buildings, streets, industrial areas, commercial complexes etc.). Accordingly, the local climate of these cites has been modified by new land use and land cover alterations which has created the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon. Erbil City in northern Iraq has been selected as a case study for the effect of urbanization on the local climate of the cities. Two sets of data were used in this study: ground weather station maximum and minimum air temperature data, over a long period for the city and surrounding rural areas, and satellite image data of the city. The results from the analysis of weather station data revealed significant changes in the local climate of the city over the time series and when comparing the spatial trend of the city with rural stations(mainly for minimum air temperature). The satellite image was used to develop a map of NDVI for the city, which in turn was used to draw the land surface temperature map of Erbil City. From this map there were indications of temperature variations from the thermal reflections of each land use and land cover of the city. The greatest proliferation of hot spots is observed over industrial areas, where the UHI are expected to develop, while the coldest areas comprise green zones.