Land-surface temperature across the United Arab Emirates rose by an area-weighted +0.19 °C year⁻¹ over 2013–2025 in the JJA window. The hottest pixels remain industrial: Mussafah, Jebel Ali, ICAD, Hamriyah. The coastline retains a paradoxical daytime cool-island signal driven by irrigation and shade, but a classic nighttime heat-island of up to +4.3 °C persists across the urbanised emirates.
| Emirate | Mean | Peak | °C/yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ajman | 40.9 | 47.3 | +0.26 |
| Sharjah | 40.6 | 48.7 | +0.23 |
| Dubai | 40.2 | 49.8 | +0.21 |
| Umm Al Quwain | 39.7 | 45.8 | +0.17 |
| Abu Dhabi | 39.4 | 49.2 | +0.18 |
| Ras Al Khaimah | 38.5 | 46.9 | +0.13 |
| Fujairah | 37.9 | 46.1 | +0.11 |
| District | Peak LST | Trend (°C/yr) | Area |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jebel Ali Industrial | 49.8 | +0.31 | 48.0 km² |
| Al Quoz | 46.4 | +0.24 | 22.3 km² |
| Dubai Investment Park | 45.6 | +0.20 | 21.5 km² |
| Downtown Dubai | 41.2 | +0.10 | 5.4 km² |
| Al Marmoom Reserve | 33.4 | -0.04 | 10.0 km² |
| Scenario | Days >30°C | Days >35°C | Days >40°C | Days >45°C |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Historical 1995–2014 | 178 | 134 | 64 | 14 |
| SSP1-2.6 · 2021–2050 | 188+10 | 150+16 | 79+15 | 22+8 |
| SSP2-4.5 · 2021–2050 | 194+16 | 158+24 | 88+24 | 28+14 |
| SSP3-7.0 · 2021–2050 | 198+20 | 164+30 | 95+31 | 33+19 |
| SSP5-8.5 · 2021–2050 | 202+24 | 170+36 | 102+38 | 38+24 |
The US EPA recognises three complementary techniques for characterising urban heat islands[1]. Direct measurement uses fixed weather stations and vehicle-mounted mobile traverses to record near-surface air temperature — the ground truth, but with sparse spatial coverage. Remote sensing uses satellite thermal-infrared bands to measure radiometric land-surface temperature (LST) across the full urban footprint. Modelling couples observations with urban canopy schemes to interpolate, hindcast, and project under future scenarios.
This atlas leans on the satellite leg. Landsat 9 TIRS provides 30 m thermal imagery at a 16-day revisit; Sentinel-2 MSI provides 10 m optical co-registration for vegetation indices; MODIS MOD11A2 provides 1 km LST at twice-daily cadence, enabling the diurnal day-vs-night SUHI signature. All pre-processing — atmospheric correction, cloud-masking, emissivity adjustment, JJA temporal compositing — runs on Google Earth Engine.
Heat-day thresholds (30, 35, 40, 45 °C) and SSP scenario projections are drawn from the World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal[2], which exposes a multi-model CMIP6 ensemble median for each country and time-window. The MENA region is warming at roughly twice the global rate; UAE projections under SSP5-8.5 see days exceeding 45 °C nearly triple by 2050.