Are Summer Resorts Cooler in Summer? A Case Study of ？zmir Province

Satellite based land surface temperatures (LST) are widely used for urban climate studies particularly at the areas where spatial distribution of meteorological data is not adequate. This paper evaluates Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data to detect summer daytime and nighttime LSTs at ？zmir city center and major summer resort areas around it. We investigated whether these summer resorts are cooler in summer than the ？zmir city center for both daytime and nighttime temperatures for the 2003-2016 period. We have found that ？andarl？ and Dikili have higher LSTs during daytime than ？zmir city center for the most of the period while ？zmir city center has higher LSTs than all the other summer resorts at nighttime. Mann – Kendall trend analysis shows that there is statistically significant negative trend at the 1% significance level for Dikili and Eski Fo？a and 5% significance level for ？zmir for daytime LSTs. However, statistically significant positive trend is observed for nighttime LST’s at the 1% significance level for ？e？me, Dikili and Urla while ？andarl？, Eski Fo？a and Yeni Fo？a has a positive trend at the 5% significance level. We attribute to nighttime positive trends of LSTs to urban heat island effect regarding urbanization and the increase of artificial surfaces in those areas