The Urban Heat Island Effect in New York City

What is a Heat Wave?

• A heat wave occurs during a period of abnormal hot weather that lasts around two or more days.
• Heat waves are one of the deadliest natural disasters in the world.
• With climate change progressing heat wave events have been more frequent and intense.

What is the Urban Heat Island Effect?

• The urban heat island effect is a phenomenon that causes heat to become trapped in urban settings resulting from:

1. Lack of green space (ie. vegetation)
2. Increased Pollution
3. Presence of tall buildings
4. Man made structures

• Click on features on the map to show its attributes (ie. land surface temperature, community district, population, etc. )
• For each color code the darker the color = the greater the intensity

The heat vulnerability index takes into account factors such as poverty, race, daytime summer surface temperatures, and green space vegetation for each NYC community district. The data used was collected from NYC DOHMH.

Land Surface Temperature (LST) data for the Summer (June-August) of 2019 was collected from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Aqua and Landsat 8 for each NYC community district.

Seasonal data shows how the land surface temperature changes as a year progresses. This map shows the average land surface temperature from the years 2013-2019 using Landsat 8 for each community district in New York City.

This map compares the population density for 2010 for community districts in New York City and the heat vulnerability index.

There are many factors that could contribute to the UHIE, such as poverty, particulate matter 2.5, unemployment and rent burden. These demographic factors can relate to the HVI.