Heat Island Effect

Resources

You will need the free Adobe Reader to view some of the files on this page. See EPA's PDF page to learn more.

Publications

Urban Heat Island Outreach Materials lists brochures, fact sheets, and other outreach materials on urban heat island formation, planning for excessive heat events, smart growth, and more.

Reducing Urban Heat Islands: Compendium of Strategies describes mitigation measures that communities can take to address the negative impacts of urban heat islands.

Excessive Heat Events Guidebook helps officials plan for and respond to excessive heat events by highlighting best practices that have been employed to save lives during excessive heat events in different urban areas and providing a menu of options that officials can use to respond to these events in their communities.

Science Corner contains a list of reports and research papers on urban heat islands, including impacts of the heat island effect, case studies, potential benefits of mitigation strategies, and more.

Mitigation Impact Screening Tool (MIST)is a software tool that estimates the impacts of urban heat island mitigation strategies on urban air temperatures, ozone, and energy consumption.

Community Actions Database contains examples of steps communities have taken to reduce the impacts of urban heat islands.

Newsroom provides recent news items from the media related to urban heat islands and heat island mitigation.
Calendar lists upcoming events related to urban heat islands and mitigation strategies.
Related Links contains links to sites with information and other resources related to urban heat islands, organized by topic.
Webcasts & Calls provides materials from periodic, national conference calls and, more recently, webcasts, on urban heat island-related topics, dating from 1998. Summaries, presentations, and other materials from the calls and webcasts are archived on this site, sorted by topic.
EPA's Heat Island Newsletter keeps you informed with periodic announcements of funding opportunities, webcasts, publications, and events of interest to the urban heat island community. To sign up for the newsletter, please complete and submit the signup form.