Application study of urban heat island effect in the Northwestern City based on MODIS

This article studied the urban heat island effect of a western city, the capital of Qinghai Province on the western plateau. This research was based on MODIS LST products from 2000 to 2008. The results showed: 1) the urban area had higher LST, the suburban and rural surroundings had lower LST; 2) the county with higher altitude had lower LST, while had lower LST with higher altitude; 3) the urbanization caused the area of UHI. With the Western Development, the city area was enlarging, denser population and more buildings restrained the air ventilation, which brought about the more UHI. Although the global warming influenced Xining region, the data didn´t showed that Xining had upward trend of LST. The reason is because the data is 8-day composites which is easy to be affected by climate conditions.