Using WUDAPT methodology to analyze the relation between LCZ zones and temperature in three Argentinian middle cities

Abstract

Urban climate is the change in meteorological paramethers that a city produce. World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT) is an international project which aims to produce a global high resolution database that captures information on urban form and function, and provides this information in a form suitable for climate science. This project has adopted the Local Climate Zones to classify the different urban areas at a local scale (Stewart and Oke, 2012) taking into account its urban morphology and it?s climatic characteristics. WUDAPT has develop an easy methodology which combines the used of free satellite images (LANDSAT 8 ? OLI), Local Climate Zones and supervised classification. The final results are urban maps that can be compare with others around the world. This product will improve our knowledge about urban climate and will help to communicate the results to urban planners.In this study this methodology is applied to three middle cities of Argentina: Mar del Plata, Bahía Blanca and Tandil. The selection has been made considering the differences in climate, population and urban form and function. In addition, surface temperature has been calculated with Landsat images. The main objective of this work is to analyzed the relation between temperature and LCZ.The results showed that each cities have its own form and function but some patrons can be seen. For example, the LCZ 3 in the three cities presented less temperature that its surroundings as a consequence of the low vegetation ratio that has this LCZ.