Assessing urban heat island intensity in a desert region: Case study Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This study introduces a methodology for estimating Surface Urban Cold Island Intensity (SUCII), incorporating techniques also used to assess Surface Urban Heat Island Intensity (SUHII) over the period 2001–2016 in the Riyadh Metropolitan Area (MAR), Saudi Arabia. Two approaches were applied to quantify SUHII: the Streutker method (Streutker, 2002) and the quantile method. Additionally, two new methods were developed in this research to estimate SUCII. These approaches rely on remote sensing data, including monthly surface temperature and annual Land Cover Type data at a 0.05° resolution, sourced from the MODIS sensor. In the MAR, the diurnal SUCII reaches a minimum of -2.38 °C in September and a maximum of 0.87 °C in January