Influence of urbanization process on urban thermal environment in Beijing

To quantitatively investigate the process of urbanization in Beijing and its influence on the warming effect, DMSP-OLS Nighttime Lights products, land use statistical data and meteorological station routine observation data combined with MODIS land surface temperature (LST) products and MODIS land cover products have been exploited. It turned out that from 2000 to 2010 the urban area in Beijing has expanded rapidly in an area pattern; the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect´s contribution to the area climate tendency is positively correlated with the index of urbanization as well as the logarithm of the permanent residential population of the city which means during this period the expansion of the construction land area is forming the thermal environment of this area and the warming trend is significant.