Impact of urban growth in Delhi and It's Peri-urban environment on urban heat exposure

Urban heat exposure (UHE) is a widespread micro-climatic event for large metropolitan and rapidly growing cities globally. Therefore, this study mainly focuses on urbanization impacts on the seasonal variation of the UHE in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) and its peri-urban environment during 2005-2020 and its reduction strategies based on Landsat dataset and MODIS dataset. To calculate the UHE, this study uses seasonal diurnal and nocturnal land surface temperature (LST), urban heat island (UHI) and urban thermal field variance index (UTFVI) maps for 2005 and 2020. The result shows that winter diurnal and nocturnal LST has been significantly increased by 2.7 degrees C. UTFVI results also shows that the ecological condition in the central to southern part not enough to reduce the heat and increase thermal discomfort. Similarly, UHI intensities have been extended from central to southern part and its surroundings due to rapid urban expansion and population concentration. Finally, we get the UHE maps for 2005 and 2020. Whoever, Delhi has high increasing trend of Urban heat exposure Zone (UHEZ) with maximum areal concentration both seasons. Finally, recommended some area-specific heat mitigation strategies for Delhi-NCR that can be helpful for urban planners and researcher in future land use planning and urban climate studies.