On the Heat Islands of Washington, DC, and New York City, NY

Data collected in 2007 from a dense commercial network (operated by AWS Convergence Technologies, Inc.) of roof-mounted temperature sensors are used to explore the heat island characteristics of Washington, DC, and New York City, NY. Considerable spatial detail is revealed, but aggregating data in annuli centered on assumed central locations in the business districts of the two cities reveals that the heat islands extend out to more than 30 km, with the New York City island being somewhat larger. The results from both arrays reveal the influence of the surroundings, with large scatter of daytime results being characteristic of sites with the greatest local surface inhomogeneity. Nighttime data are more ordered, and suggest that surface air temperatures decrease by about 0.02°C km⁻¹ for the Washington case, and 0.04°C km⁻¹ for New York, with the winter behaviour being more pronounced than for other seasons. Scatter of the data in the daytime is a common feature for all seasons, but mainly for those with the strongest insolation. Comparison between working day and weekend temperatures provides convincing verification that the air responds quite slowly to changes in surface (radiometric) temperatures, with distance constants of the order of many tens of km. There appears to be a small wind speed effect, which is evident in the nighttime data but is largely obscured by scatter for the daytime.