Urban Warming in Port Harcourt Metropolis and Environs

Abstract

The study examined urban warming in Port Harcourt Metropolis and Environs. The data used for this study were generated from field observation at fixed points on different land use types in the urban canopy between January to December 2017. Analysis of Variance was used to determine the differences in temperature across the various land use types. Thus, the temperature across different land use types from the city center to the rural fringes varied at the range of 4.8°C with a mean temperature value of 30.1°C. Urban warming was higher on the first three days of the week with a variation of 3.3°C and mean value of 5°C across the weekdays. However, urban warming increased at the rate of 0.1-0.20C per decade with 3.5% rise in population contributed by poor vegetation of the area. As a result, the city exceeded the recommended heat comfort threshold of 27°C temperature and +0.5°C-2.5°C urban warming value indicating that human comfort was compromised. Commercial and high residential areas had the highest urban heat effect across the different land use types. The result indicated that there was significant temperature variation across the different land use types. It was observed that increase in temperature does not imply a proportional increase in urban warming across different land use types. It is, therefore, recommended that policymakers, environmental practitioners as well as friends of the earth should adopt urban planning and management strategies using tree planting and general urban-greening approach in order to intervene urban warming in Port Harcourt Metropolis and Environs without further delay.