Remote sensing for urban heat island research: Progress, current issues, and perspectives

Urban Heat Island (UHI) research has acquired popularity in recent decades because of increasing recognition of heat stress impacts on human health, environments, and urban resilience under the compounding pressures of urbanization and climate change. The development of remote sensing technology has dramatically facilitated UHI research to better understand its spatiotemporal characteristics. However, there remain many knowledge gaps, confusions, and issues in surface UHI (SUHI) studies, such as different definitions of urban and rural areas, methodologies dealing with cloud cover, and other common pitfalls that can increase uncertainties and confuse researchers and practitioners in choosing appropriate assessment methods. We showcase these issues along with future research directions to overcome them. This review also evaluates SUHI studies over the past decade and systematically highlights the control factors, quantitative proxies, impacts, and mitigation interventions. This review provides a valuable reference and opens up new avenues for future research to better understand the dynamics of local climate change under the complex interplay between urbanization and global climate change. •An overview of global UHIs intensity studies is given.•We reviewed and synthesized controlling factors and quantitative proxies.•Urban air pollution and public health impacts of UHIs and mitigation strategies were discussed.•We highlighted common issues and uncertainties in UHIs research along with future research directions.