The unrelenting global expansion of the urban heat island over the last century

The past century has seen dramatic increases in global temperatures and mounting urbanization. As a result of these events, the urban heat island (UHI) effect has received growing attention in scientific research worldwide. A global search was initially conducted using a scientific literature database to collect all available relevant publications to un-derstand how the UHI has been expanding worldwide and affecting more cities across different latitudes and altitudes. Subsequently, a semantic analysis was performed to extract city names. The literature search and analysis combined resulted in 6078 publications in which UHI was investigated in 1726 cities worldwide in the 1901 to 2022 time period. The cities were grouped into 'first appearance' and 'recurrent appearance'. Results show that UHI was studied in only 134 cities during the 90-year period from 1901 to 1992, with a remarkable growth over time in the number of cities where interest in UHI increased. Interestingly, the number of first appearances was always notably higher than the number of recurrent appearances. The Shannon evenness index was employed to identify the spatial locations (hotspots) across the globe where UHI-related research has been concentrated in multiple cities over the last 120 years. Finally, Europe was selected as a testbed for conducting an analysis to shed light on how economic, demo-graphic, and environmental factors can impact UHI. Our study is unique for having demonstrated not only the rapid growth of cities affected by UHI globally but also the increasing and unrelenting expansion of UHI occurrences across different latitudes and altitudes over time. These novel findings will undoubtedly be of interest to scientists investigat-ing the UHI phenomenon and its trends. Stakeholders will acquire a broader perspective and deeper understanding of UHI in order to engage in more effective urban planning to offset and mitigate the phenomenon's adverse effects in the context of increasing climate change and urbanization.

Automated summary

The past century has witnessed the rise in global temperatures and urbanization, resulting in increasing attention to the urban heat island (UHI) effect in scientific research worldwide. A literature search and semantic analysis were conducted, revealing that UHI has been investigated in 1726 cities worldwide from 1901 to 2022. The study showed a growing interest in UHI and a higher number of first appearances compared to recurrent appearances. The spatial distribution of UHI-related research was identified, and an analysis in Europe explored the impact of economic, demographic, and environmental factors on UHI.