Urban Heat Islands in Small Towns- Deniliquin, Australia

Recent research in Deniliquin suggests that as country towns grow they experience warmer nights. The warming of the nighttime temperature is due to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, which is the result of two main features of urban areas. First, buildings, roads and paved surfaces store heat during the day, which is then released slowly over the evening due to the thermal properties of the surface materials and the building geometry which traps the heat stored during the day. The second contributing factor to the UHI is due to the artificial heat released into the urban atmosphere by combustive processes from vehicles, industrial activity and the heat that escapes from commercial and domestic air conditioning.

The controversy surrounding the role of the UHI on estimates of global warming has focused critical attention on Deniliquin’s 136 years of temperature record. Few towns in Australia have a longer history of temperature measurement, hence it is a logical choice for research of the UHI and its effect on our understanding of climate variability.

Suggested citation or credit:

Morris , CJG (Jon). “Urban Heat Islands in Small Towns- Deniliquin, Australia .” The University of Melbourne, School of Earth Sciences, Victoria, Australia . . http://www.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/~jon/WWW/deniliquin.html (accessed April 17, 2012).

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