ANALYSES OF THE TEMPERATURE AND HUMIDITY ASPECTS AND THE FORMATION OF THE URBAN HEAT ISLAND IN SOROCABA-SP, BRAZIL

Abstract

Many researchers have been studying urban climates. Usually they discuss the impacts of urban growth in the quality of the air, in the life of cities’ inhabitants, and in the temperature. Within this context, we chose to analyze the urban climate of Sorocaba, a medium sized city that has shown a constant industrial and economic growth. There are three main goals in this paper: first is to contribute to the climatologic literature in the region; second, to provide a comparative analysis of the humidity and temperature of air in the urban and rural area; and third, to identify the signs of an urban heat island (UHI). We installed HOBBO U10 dataloggers in the central area of the city and in the rural neighborhood. We set the devices to collect data of temperature and humidity of air every one hour (24h per day), from July 4th, 2012 to July 2nd, 2013. We found that the temperature and humidity of air followed the standard trend for the region. The minimum temperatures in the urban area were higher than those temperatures in the rural neighborhood, and the relative humidity values were lower in the city center. The results point out to the existence of an urban heat island with varying magnitude, indicating that the urbanization, population, and industrial growth have already induced to local changes in the urban atmosphere.