both the magnitude and spatial extent of an urban heat island. Future studies may
focus on monitoring the heat island of a single city for extended periods in order to
study the growth and management of the heat excess. Remotely sensed temperature
data may also be helpful in studying the heat islands of several urban areas in a
given region and performing comparative analyses. The satellite sensor data is also
relatively easy to obtain for most areas of the Earth and is thus useful for global
studies.
It is questionable as to whether this method would be improved by using data
with higher spatial resolution. Such data would obviously allow for the identi cation
of smaller features, but this would likely not make the Gaussian surface t any
better. Higher-resolution data could, however, contain higher single-pixel temper- atures in the case of small, hot features that were obscured in the current data by
surrounding cold regions.