Where are the heat islands in Dutch inner cities? Innovation Origins will try to answer this question over the coming weeks with the help of EcoStress data compiled by the American space agency NASA. Since last month, these measurements, which are taken at sections spanning 70 x 70 meters, have also been available for Dutch cities, making it possible to spot the local heat islands on a street level. Read the other episodes of this series here.
Seven cities have since been put under the microscope. We warmed up with the figures from the Dutch city of Enschede, while Arnhem, Eindhoven and The Hague played the lead roles in the second episode. Now it is the turn of Tilburg, Groningen and Utrecht in this third episode. All month long, three new cities will be added every Tuesday and Friday.
A note on this before we start: by definition, ground temperature behaves more extremer than the values we are familiar with from weather maps. This is because meteorologists measure these values at a height of one-and-a-half meters above a grass field and hence not in densely built-up inner cities.
Also, the colors per map are slightly skewed, which means that the same colors on map A do not necessarily correspond to those on map B. This is why the data from the NASA measurements are also expressed numerically. On a sunny summer day like Friday, August 12, it is almost always hotter near the ground surface than on the weather maps provided by the KNMI. Consequently, the frames show what the maximum air temperature was according to the nearest weather station.
Tilburg
With the lack of a historic city center and a legacy of aldermen who demolished the city during the reconstruction years, Tilburg is not particularly known as a city where much thought went into cooling off during hot summer days. And although the 013 zone certainly does have heat islands in its inner city area, they tend to be fairly modest in size. Admittedly, the shopping center does exceed 44 degrees C, but compared to other cities, the temperature is quite moderate here.
Despite the fact that the nearby Gilze Rijen airport, with a temperature of 33.2 degrees C, was home to the warmest weather in the Netherlands on August 12, NASA Ecostress data shows that Tilburg is definitely not one of the worst offenders as far as heat islands are concerned. Nowhere in the center does the mercury hit 47 °C. You can zoom in even further by using the interactive tool below.
The Pieter Vreedeplein and Nieuwlandsstraat heated up the most. The highest mean temperatures are found a stone’s throw from the center in the neighborhoods of Hoefstraat and Koestraat, where it reaches almost 48 degrees C locally.
More refreshing temperatures can be found in the Oude Dijk city park and around Tivoli Park, especially in the residential areas a little further east. In fact, the number of extreme heat islands is relatively low here, especially compared to the rest of the cities.
Groningen
Even though Groningen remained almost two degrees cooler according to the KNMI, the historic city center is heating up much more and on a larger scale than Tilburg. The iconic Grote Markt forms a kind of hot core of a very expansive heat island that runs roughly from the Rijksuniversiteit (university) complex to the Vismarkt and actually includes all the surrounding streets up to the Gedempte Zuiderdiep with values around or well above 45 degrees Celsius.
Still, there is always a boss above a boss in the form of Sontplein, where, near the parking lot of furniture giant IKEA and – ironically – the fire station, it almost hit 50°C.
So, is there nowhere you can find some coolness in the 050 zone on hot summer days? Yes there sure is! In the Noorderplantsoen, the ground stayed below forty degrees C in most places. Further east, the Oosterpark and Pioenpark fulfil the role of oases. Moreover, these green areas exude their influence quite considerably, making it also relatively agreeable to spend time in the surrounding residential areas as opposed to the hot historical heart of the largest city in the North of the Netherlands.
Utrecht
Is there nowhere that beats Groningen this episode? Well, the answer to that is “yes.” When you leave Utrecht Central Station via the ‘quiet side’, you end up on the Jaarbeursplein where ground temperatures have been measured that make any previous spot pale in comparison. With its dark, flat roofs and ample parking, you can rightly call this area an oven. At a staggering 55.5°C, frying an egg on the hood of a car must have been perfectly possible here on that sunny Friday afternoon.
The inner city tends to be a lot cooler, but because the color gradients rose so far up the map of Utrecht, the colors paint a slightly fictitious picture. Still, the narrow shopping streets around the Oude Gracht and the Neude are not among the all-time hotspots in this series, with a maximum of 46 degrees C on the cobblestones of the Vinkenburgstraat.
By making vast swaths of the inner city more car-free, and the demolition of dilapidated sections of Hoog Catharijne along with the reconstruction of the historic western canal, this project also seems to hit the bull’s-eye when it comes to heat island management.
The new canal and surrounding green zones mean that it does not get nearly as hot in the west of the Utrecht city center as it does elsewhere. Yet for the most refreshing spot, we should visit the east side, where the grass around the Sonnenborgh Museum observatory manages to stay under 40 °C.
Hotspot Top Ten
Starting with this third episode, the very first spots in the surveyed cities are ranked in a Top Ten, with a maximum of three locations being allowed to compete. The Jaarbeursplein is now leader on that list, with 55.5°C as the absolute high in the seven cities studied so far. Enschede is listed in quite a number of those places thanks to three spots. This is what the complete list looks like so far.
In answer to the question of whether other cities might experience even more severe heat stress than around the Jaarbeursplein, that should become clear over the next few weeks, with next Tuesday’s episode 4 featuring three new Dutch cities.
Seven cities from 'cold' to 'hot'
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