Scaling intra-urban climate fluctuations

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Duran-Sala, Marc, Hendrick, Martin, Manoli, Gabriele
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866911697704321024
author Duran-Sala, Marc
Hendrick, Martin
Manoli, Gabriele
author_facet Duran-Sala, Marc
Hendrick, Martin
Manoli, Gabriele
contents Urban-induced microclimate variations, such as urban heat islands and air pollution, scale with city size, producing distinctive relations between average climate variables and city-scale quantities (e.g., total population). However, these relations are sensitive to city boundary definitions and overlook intra-urban variability. Here, we overcome these limitations by using high-resolution data of urban temperatures, air quality, population, and street networks from 142 cities worldwide, showing that their marginal and joint probability distributions collapse onto a set of general functions inspired by finite-size scaling in statistical physics. Through a logarithmic relation linking urban spatial features to climate variables, we find that average street network properties are sufficient to characterize the full variability of temperature and air pollution fields within and across cities. These findings show that intra-urban climate variability follows general scaling functions, enabling the integration of climate information into reduced-complexity models of urban systems to better inform future urban planning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_19998
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Scaling intra-urban climate fluctuations
Duran-Sala, Marc
Hendrick, Martin
Manoli, Gabriele
Physics and Society
Statistical Mechanics
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Urban-induced microclimate variations, such as urban heat islands and air pollution, scale with city size, producing distinctive relations between average climate variables and city-scale quantities (e.g., total population). However, these relations are sensitive to city boundary definitions and overlook intra-urban variability. Here, we overcome these limitations by using high-resolution data of urban temperatures, air quality, population, and street networks from 142 cities worldwide, showing that their marginal and joint probability distributions collapse onto a set of general functions inspired by finite-size scaling in statistical physics. Through a logarithmic relation linking urban spatial features to climate variables, we find that average street network properties are sufficient to characterize the full variability of temperature and air pollution fields within and across cities. These findings show that intra-urban climate variability follows general scaling functions, enabling the integration of climate information into reduced-complexity models of urban systems to better inform future urban planning.
title Scaling intra-urban climate fluctuations
topic Physics and Society
Statistical Mechanics
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19998