Urban Heat Island in a Small Size Town in Northwestern Greece—A Comparison to Other Greek Areas

Abstract

The rapid urbanization in the recent decades modified negatively the urban environments. The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect is a phenomenon which came as a consequence to this urbanization and has damaging effects in several areas, the ecological, socio-ecological, economical and climatical included. This study investigates the UHI in a small size town in northwestern Greece for four years (2011–2014), by analyzing hourly air temperatures and meteorological data in one urban-traffic and one rural station. Furthermore, the study investigates the dependence of the UHI to the basic atmospheric forcings and comperes the findings with the measured results from other works in Greece. It is worth mentioning from the inter-comparison that despite the fact that Kozani is the smallest and less populated town, Kozani’s UHI has approximately the magnitude of the one measured in Thessaloniki and it is higher from those measured in Volos and Agrinio during the winter period. Finally, the study investigates the energy demands in the city regarding the cooling and heating hours and comments on the impacts of the UHI.