Long-term dynamics of urban thermal comfort in China's four major capital cities across different climate zones

Yao Fu; Zhibin Ren; Qiuyan Yu; Xingyuan He; Lu Xiao; Qiong Wang; Chang Liu

doi:10.7717/peerj.8026

Long-term dynamics of urban thermal comfort in China's four major capital cities across different climate zones

PeerJ. 2019 Nov 11:7:e8026. doi: 10.7717/peerj.8026. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Yao Fu^{1

2}, Zhibin Ren¹, Qiuyan Yu³, Xingyuan He¹, Lu Xiao¹, Qiong Wang¹, Chang Liu⁴

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Wetland Ecology and Environment, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ Plant and Environment Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, United States of America.
⁴ College of Forestry, Southwest Forest University, Kunming, Yunnan, China.

Abstract

China has experienced intensive urbanization over the past decades. However, it is still unclear about the influence of urbanization on urban thermal comfort and how the effect varies with climate condition. Based on long-term daily meteorological data from 1990 to 2015 in four Chinese cities undergoing rapid urbanization, our study tried to detect the long-term dynamics of summer urban thermal comfort across different climate zones and analyze their relationships with urbanization. Our results showed that urbanization can increase urban temperature and decrease relative humidity and wind velocity. Urban thermal comfort and discomfort days also changed greatly, especially in Harbin, Northeast China from 1990 to 2015. However, such changes for different cities across different climate zones are inconsistent. Results also showed that urbanization especially for social economic activities can have a significant influence on the physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET). Compared with southern cities, the PET in northern cities such as Harbin and Changchun in this study is more sensitive to urbanization. These results reveal that the changing patterns of urban thermal comfort in Chinese cities under rapid urbanization, and help government take some effective measures to improve urban thermal environment.

Keywords: Urban planning; Urban thermal comfort; Urbanization.

Grants and funding

This research was supported by the Youth Science fund project (41701210) approved by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Science Development Project of Jilin Province, China (20180418138FG). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.