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The urban thermal environment varies not only from its rural surroundings but also within the urban area due to intra-urban differences in land-use and surface characteristics. Understanding the causes of this intra-urban variability is a first step in improving urban planning and development. Toward this end, a method for quantifying causes of spatial variability in the urban heat island has been developed. This paper presents the method as applied to a specific test case of Portland, Oregon. Vehicle temperature traverses were used to determine spatial differences in summertime ~2 m air temperature across the metropolitan area in the afternoon. A tree-structured regression model was used to quantify the land-use and surface characteristics that have the greatest influence on daytime UHI intensity. The most important urban characteristic separating warmer from cooler regions of the Portland metropolitan area was canopy cover. Roadway area density was also an important determinant of local UHI magnitudes. Specifically, the air above major arterial roads was found to be warmer on weekdays than weekends, possibly due to increased anthropogenic activity from the vehicle sector on weekdays. In general, warmer regions of the city were associated with industrial and commercial land-use. The downtown core, whilst warmer than the rural surroundings, was not the warmest part of the Portland metropolitan area. This is thought to be due in large part to local shading effects in the urban canyons.
Presentation by David Sailor, professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and director of the Urban Climate Research Center at ASU. Sailer's presentation addresses how to define urban heat islands (UHI), and decisions about why and how to measure these complex ecosystems.
Ozone is a highly reactive compound that is harmful at very low concentrations as compared to other pollutants. One method of pollution control is the use of photocatalysis, specifically with titanium dioxide to induce ozone decomposition. An experiment was designed and executed in order to determine the rate of decomposition by coating concrete in 5% by weight titanium dioxide mixed with paint. The experiment was unsuccessful in inducing decomposition but gave important insight into the adsorptive properties of ozone over surfaces, particularly with bare concrete that had an adsorption of 22.51 ± 2.457 ppbv, which was much better than the coated samples. Further studies into the development of photocatalytic paint is needed in order to develop an effective urban ozone pollution control method to be implemented in major cities, particularly in the most polluted such as Los Angeles, California.