Towards real time quarter-hour monitoring of the urban thermal environment at sharpened spatial resolution

In recent years, the importance of monitoring the spatial and temporal characteristics of the Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) phenomenon has increased due to the rapid growth of the urban population. A system for real time and online monitoring of the urban thermal environment, which exploits the fine temporal resolution (15 min) of Meteosat Second Generation - Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (MSG-SEVIRI), at a spatial resolution of 1 km, is being developed at the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing of the National Observatory of Athens (IAASARS/NOA). The system utilizes a large number of global ancillary data, and comprises four separate major modules, namely: satellite image acquisition; nowcasting and very short range forecasting; land surface temperature (LST) derivation; and LST downscaling. Initially the system will cover the Institute host city of Athens, Greece, one of the eight Group on Earth Observations (GEO), Task SB-04 Supersites. However, the overall goal is to expand its coverage to every city observed by MSG-SEVIRI with a population larger that one million. This system will fill a large gap in data availability for SUHI studies, since no high spatial and temporal resolution data are acquired on a systematic basis. Furthermore, it will also provide a framework for further research and the development of numerous applications.