Monitoring Temperature Variations and Urban Heat Island of Lahore, Pakistan

Abstract

The phenomenon of Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a result of various factors ranging from increase
in urban built-up land to human activities and has affected the climate in urban areas. Therefore, the main
objective of the current study is to monitor the temperature variations and assess the UHI in Lahore city. In
order to calculate the temperature variations and UHI, the meterological data were collected by installing
Weather station 1080, at two selected sites of Mozang (urban site) and Sarang (rural site) from January 15 to
18, 2015 (4 days) in winter season. The analysis was performed in SPPS 17 and MS Excel 2010 softwares
for description of data by creating graphs, while study area map was created in ArcGIS 10.3. The results of
the study reveal that notable variations of temperature were recorded between Mozang and Sarang. The
mean day-time temperature (23.9C) was higher at Sarang than at Mozang (22.8C), whereas, the
temperature at night was higher at Mozang and lower at Sarang. The R2 value of 0.0041 also demonstrates
positive relationship between UHI and dew point at Mozang. The speed and direction of wind also
influences the intensity of UHI. During the observational days, the range of UHI was 4.3C to 6.2C. Hence,
the difference between the minimum and maximum temperature was almost 2C which indicated that the
UHI was enhancing. Lastly, few suggestions were proposed to mitigate the issue of UHI in Lahore district.

Keywords: Urban heat island, urbanization, Lahore, climate change, weather station 1080.