Urban Heat Snapshot

Publication

Our cities are getting hotter. The increased frequency of heatwaves - driven by climate change - along with the design of our cities mean that urban heat islands are beginning to form, often affecting the most vulnerable. So how do we stop our cities from overheating?

People walking down a city street in the sun

Last updated: May 2024

Everyone feels it - our cities are getting hotter.

Millions of people are increasingly suffering from frequent heatwaves and the design of our cities is intensifying the problem - with the most vulnerable often the worst impacted.

A new digital solution from Arup – UHeat – has helped us to explore the issue in greater detail than ever before.

Our resulting ‘Urban Heat Snapshot’ reveals how the urban heat island (UHI) effect is pushing up temperatures in cities like London, Madrid, Mumbai and Los Angeles.

The snapshot highlights how:

temperatures can vary significantly from neighbourhood to neighbourhood
proximity to nature and vegetation is hugely important
poorer neighbourhoods are more likely to experience higher temperatures
employing machine learning and satellite imagery can help identify areas suffering most acutely and model interventions

expected increase in number of cities exposed to heat above 35°C by 2050

estimated number of deaths in Europe associated with extreme heat in 2022

increase in tree cover in European cities could have prevented over 2,500 excess deaths

Creating the snapshot - taking the temperature from the sky

Snapshot insights

The Urban Heat Snapshot analysed the temperature in the urban centres of nine cities: Brisbane, Cairo, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Melbourne, Mumbai, New York and Singapore.

The snapshot revealed that Madrid had the most severe UHI - 8.5C hotter than its rural surroundings, that the hottest spots had less than 6% vegetation cover - whilst the coolest had over 70%, and that three of the cities experienced their worst UHI during the evening.