Abstract
Urban environments are usually hotter than their rural surroundings, a phenomenon known as the urban heat island (UHI) effect. The mean UHI effect implies that urban environments would experience more heat events if the same temperature threshold is used to identify heat events in both urban and rural environments. However, the role of higher-order temperature statistics, such as temperature variance and persistence, in determining urban–rural differences of heat event occurrence remains elusive. Here, using numerical simulations from two global models, we demonstrate that up to 94% of urban–rural differences in hot day occurrence are driven by the mean UHI effects normalized by temperature variance, that is, the standardized mean UHI effects. For multi-day heat events, temperature persistence further plays an important role. These findings reveal how the temperature mean, variance and persistence interact to determine the urban–rural difference in heat event occurrence. Cities with more pronounced standardized mean UHI effects and enhanced temperature persistence should place greater emphasis on mitigating the adverse impacts caused by extreme heat.
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Data availability
Data generated in this study are available on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15131945 (ref. 34) and are publicly accessible.
Code availability
Analysis code used in this study is available on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15131945 (ref. 34). MATLAB R2022b is used to analyze the data.
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Acknowledgements
X.L. acknowledges support from the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (grant no. 42225107). W.L. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 42271419), Innovation Group Project of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) (grant no. 311021004), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Sun Yat-sen University (grant no. 23lgbj014). D.L. acknowledges support from the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, as part of research in MultiSector Dynamics, Earth and Environmental System Modeling Program.
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W.L. designed the study, carried out the analysis and wrote the paper. L.W. performed the simulations. X.L. designed and supervised the study. D.C. and D.L. designed the study and wrote the paper.
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Nature Cities thanks Matteo Zampieri and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Liao, W., Wang, L., Liu, X. et al. Standardized heat islands and persistence drive modeled urban heat events. Nat Cities 2, 857–864 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00290-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00290-2
