ИСТИНА

Rapid urbanization and intensive anthropogenic impact on the environment within urban areas makes urban climatology especially important study area. Urban climate features, such Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, are well studied for moderate and tropical climate zones. In general, UHI is considered as a negative phenomenon because of its influence on people’s thermal comfort and energy consumption. For the Arctic, on the contrary, positive effect could be expected, because UHI could mitigate severe frosts and provide fuel economy for house heating. However, until nowadays knowledge about polar UHIs was extremely poor. The only existing researches considered small towns in Alaska, while UHIs of the biggest Arctic cities, located in Russia, remained undiscovered. Results of the UHI research for the Russian Arctic cities (Apatity, Nadym, Novy Urengoy, Salekhard) are presented in this study. Comprehensive analysis, based experimental measurements by automatic weather stations and low-cost temperature sensors, remote sensing data and regional climate revealed that during the winter, even under polar night conditions, anthropogenic heating forms UHIs with mean intensity about 1°C. Extreme values of the UHI intensity, observed during cold spells, could reach 6 °C and even more. When anthropogenic effect is combined with natural microclimatic variability, caused, for example, by hilly relief, resulting temperature differences between the city and its surroundings could reach 10-12 °C. Economic effect of the UHI of during the Arctic winter, related to the fuel consumption for house heating, was roughly estimated as millions USD per year.