Further Observations of the Urban Heat Island in a Small City

Abstract

Studies of the heat island effect produced by urban centers have focused almost exclusively on large cities. Knowledge concerning the extent to which small places. i.e., towns with less than 50,000 people, exert a similar effect on their atmospheric environment is limited in this country. Only at Palo Alto, Calif., and Corvallis, Oreg., have such studies been conducted. This paper reports the results of temperature measurements and their spatial patterns taken by mobile traverses during the course of three seasons at Chapel Hill, N. C., and compares the heat island effect identified in this small university town with previous studies. The comparison shows a similarity among derived data which lends support to the ranking of urban places by population size as a climatic parameter.