Abstract
Many Mediterranean cities are currently experiencing unprecedented growth. Beyond their postcard images with charming architecture and timeless harmony, these cities have an urgent need to tackle the challenges of modernity. Their unrestricted sprawl to meet population growth and economic expansion comes at the expense of natural ecosystems and possibly contributes to the rise in temperatures locally leading to an urban heat island (UHI) in cities. Particularly, Casablanca, the largest city in Morocco, has recently undergone an important urban expansion as a result of a demographic explosion and a strong anthropic pressure, hence the need to address the impact of urban growth on its climate.
This paper aims to assess the UHI in the city of Casablanca, compare its intensity between day and night, and finally study through the different climatic changes of the four seasons.
For this, we conduct an analysis of thermal data over several temporalities: the day and the night, the equinoxes and the solstices of the four seasons and finally over a decade. Thermal data was obtained from the satellite instrument MODIS. The analysis across these temporalities leads to a series of interpretations related to several factors.
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The authors are grateful for the Royal Center for Remote Sensing for having provided the necessary satellite images for the study as well as an internship for an author.
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El Ghazouani, L., Mansour, M., Lachir, A., Smiej, M.F., Laaroussi, N. (2020). The Diurnal and Nocturnal Aspects of Urban Heat Island During the four Seasons—Case of Casablanca. In: Sayigh, A. (eds) Green Buildings and Renewable Energy. Innovative Renewable Energy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30841-4_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30841-4_7
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