Hyper-local heat beyond surface temperature (471)
Show notes
V. Kelly Turner and colleagues find that a satellite map of land surface temperature is a poor guide to theheat a person feels in Civano, Tucson. Painting a street white can cool the pixel and heat the pedestrian.
The debate is on their 2022 paper in the Journal of Land Use Science. One side keeps 30 metre Landsat maps as the tool cities can actually use. The other shows how a morning snapshot, and a coat of reflective paint, can miss or worsen mean radiant temperature for the person on the street. Shade cools that person and keeps the asphalt from charging overnight, with a night-time catch when a dense canopy holds heat in.
(00:00) White streets and pedestrians
(02:46) Civano as a laboratory
(03:39) Mean radiant temperature
(06:00) A 10am satellite pass
(07:03) Walking with MaRTy
(08:46) The cool-street trap
(10:57) Shade and stored heat
(11:37) Trees that warm the night
(12:40) Which heat problem
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1747423X.2021.2015003
Shownotes: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/13/471r_more-than-surface-temperature-mitigating-thermal-exposure-inhyper-local-land-system/
Pairs with episode 472, V. Kelly Turner: https://wtf4cities.com/2026/10/15/472i_kelly-turner-associate-director-and-professor-of-urban-planning-and-geography-at-uclas-luskin-center-for-innovation/
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