Remote Sensing of Urban Energy and CO2 Fluxes

Dear Colleagues,

Emerging Earth Observation (EO) missions deliver improved data quality, extended coverage, and frequent observations, which are capable of supporting both urban planning activities and urban climate studies by providing the means to estimate the Urban Energy Budget (UEB) and CO₂ emissions on a neighbourhood scale. UEB includes the anthropogenic heat flux (resulting from vehicular emissions, space heating and cooling of buildings, and industrial processing and metabolic heat release by people) and therefore, together with CO₂ flux, reflects the functionality of the city and the metabolism of energy and carbon. Consequently, energy balance and carbon balance are important parameters for urban planning and design that should be taken into account in urban interventions aiming to improve the quality of life in cities. Both urban planning and urban climate communities need spatially disaggregated heat and CO₂ fluxes, on a neighbourhood scale. Such information is practically impossible to derive by in-situ fluxes measurements, whereas the potential of EO to provide heat and CO₂ fluxes on a local scale is not fully exploited. Thus, one of the main challenges facing the urban remote sensing community is the innovative exploitation of EO to support the estimation of UEB spatiotemporal patterns and CO₂ emissions on a local scale. This EO-based approach is expected to advance the current knowledge of the impact of heat and CO₂ fluxes on energy consumption in cities, leading to the development of tools and strategies to mitigate this impact, improving thermal comfort and energy efficiency.

This Special Issue aims to collect new developments and methodologies, best practices and applications of remote sensing towards supporting the estimation of energy, and CO₂ fluxes in urban and peri-urban areas. We welcome submissions that provide the community with the most recent advancements on all relevant aspects of urban remote sensing and urban climatology, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Synergistic Analysis of Remote Sensing Observations
• Analysis of Time Series of Satellite Observations
• Urban Surface Structure, Cover, and Vegetation Dynamics
• Urban Surface Temperature and Albedo
• EO-based Urban Surface Parameterization Schemes
• Urban Radiation Balance
• Turbulent Sensible and Latent Heat Fluxes
• Heat Storage in the Urban Structures
• Urban Anthropogenic Heat Flux
• Local Scale Urban Carbon Budget and CO₂ Emissions
• Evaluation of EO-derived Energy and Carbon Fluxes
• Zoning of Urban Areas Based on Heat and CO₂ Emissions
• Contribution of Energy Fluxes to Urban Heat Island Development
• Contribution of Energy Fluxes to Heat Stress at Neighbourhood Level
• Contribution of UEB and CO₂ Fluxes to Climate Change Mitigation/Adaptation
• Monitoring the Effect of Nature-based Solutions on Heat and CO₂ Emissions

Review articles covering one or more of these topics are also welcome.

Dr. Nektarios Chrysoulakis
Prof. Dr. Eberhard Parlow
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.