Assessing the influence of land use land cover on urban climate and thermal comfort in tropical city

Urbanization affects the Earth’s land surfaces due to anthropogenic activities, although its effects on small and medium tropical and subtropical cities have received little attention. Urbanization modified Land Use Land Cover (LULC) indirectly contributes to changing the urban thermal environment, governed by Land Surface Temperature (LST), and creates an imbalance in surface energy balances causing local to global deterioration of the climate and human existence. Using a time series of Landsat imageries, this study intends to assess the influence of LULC on LST and thermal comfort in Aurangabad city from the year 2002 to 2022 using ArcGIS 10.6 software. LST
mean
difference between built-up areas & waterbody is 9.37°C and with vegetation is 4.29°C. The thermal discomfort levels of the city moved from lower to higher because of decreasing dense vegetation. This research outcome can be utilized to create a thermally comfortable environment for better climate-sensitive urban planning in Indian cities.