The moving observations in and around a New-Town at Hibariga-Oka (Lark Hill) have been carried out to measure a specimen of urban temperature distribution. This New-Town is located at the western outskirts of Tokyo and the distance between the centers of them is about 20 km and 1 hr's ride by the suburban and subway trains (Fig. 1). The town has been consisted of 182 residential buildings in the area of 335, 000m
2. Most of them are four storied and they have been lived by mostly commuters to Tokyo. And its total population reachs almost 10, 000.
The temperature distribution has been measured several times during the second half of 1966, using a thermister thermometer mounted on a bicycle or an automobile about at 1m above the ground. The observation route and observation points have been selected beforehand as were indicated on Fig. 2.
The observed temperatures at various points were converted into the relative values. This values were represented by the differences between the observed values and those of the central points (B) of the town respectively.
When they were calm and not overcasted, heat islands were identified clearly as on Sept. 20, Oct. 8 and 13 (Figs. 5 a, b and c) . And almost every occasion, the lowest temperature was recorded at the western outside of the town. However, when the strong wind prevailed as on Nov. 3 (Fig. 5 d) or completely overcasted as on Nov. 30 (Fig. 5 e), heat islands were not observed.
Every two-hourly observations have been scheduled particularly from 1800 to 0600 on Dec. 10-11, and a process of heat island formation has been recognized.
At the beginning of the observation at 1800, there was no appearance of heat island (Fig. 6 a). However, heat island began to appear about at 2200 and then its formation became remarkable more and more as the time passed to midnight. The full formation of heat island on this occasion reached at the early morning at 0400 (Fig. 6 b-g). No appearence of heat island at the early evening might be influenced by the heat production caused by traffic congestion at the eastern-side of the town. And the full formation at 0400 might be attributed to the sparsity of the traffic. The comparison of the hourly mean temperature change of out-side (A) and inside (B) of the town has shown no significant increase of the temperature difference between these two points as the time passed (Fig. 7).
The vertical temperature profiles up to 25m has been also observed from 1700 to 2400 on Dec. 10 at the central part of the town. The temperatures at the height of 25m, 18m, 12m, 5m and 1m have been recorded by electric thermometers installed on a water-tank tower. The profiles showed strong surface inversions all through the observation period. The largest temperature difference between 25m and 1m was 2.5°C at 1800. Then the difference began to decrease to 0.5°C at 2200 (Figs. 8 and 9).
Checking the sequences of the vertical temperature profiles and the wind situations (ob-served at the nearest weather observation station of 5km away from the town) during the night of Dec. 10-11, it has been distinguished that the existance of fairly remarkable correlations between increasing of the wind speed and weakening of the surface inversion and sudden rise of surface temperature, as were recorded at 1820, 2020, 2120 and 2230 (Fig. 8). The surface temperature differences between inside and outside of the town have been shown on Fig. 10. The remarkable is the increasing of the difference just after the weakening of the surface inversion in the town as it were at 1810 to 1835 on Fig. 10.
The heat production by human activities in the town has been roughly estimated about 6.4×10
9 car/hr. This amount is evaluated almost equivalent with the total heat need to warm up the town air by 1°C. However, the amount of produced heat by the town might not be sufficient to create heat islands in temperature distribution.
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