Assessing summer air temperatures in Biel/Bienne Switzerland 2022-2023.

Note

First results available for the historic July heatwaves

This project analyzes the summer air temperature in Biel/Bienne from July 2022 - September 2022 and from May 2023 - September 2023. The first phase of the project uses five temperature sensors placed within the city and two serving as reference measurements. This project will inform the placement of the full sensor network of around 30 sites in phase 2 in 2023. It builds off of the 4-year running air temperature measurement network created by the Geography Institute of the University of Bern. Not only have the sensors and data methods been tested and published in peer reviewed papers, but the relative proximity of Biel to Bern (~ 25 km) ensures the data and methods provide a useful reference point.

Increased public awareness of the threat that heatwaves can pose to vulnerable people, along with the projected increasing frequency and intensity of heatwaves, has led to an increased interest in the urban heat island effect. This is defined as difference in air temperature between built-up areas and surrounding rural reference points due to the different features of the city. Biel/Bienne has a unique topography to explore the effects of urban heat especially thanks to the neighboring Jura mountain range, the Lake of Biel, the Thielle river, the Suze river, and the Nidau-Büren Kanal which border and (and in the case of the Suze) cut through the city.

Note

See the sister repository for the data files and figures used in this report, as well as the notebooks used to generate the results.

About

I (Gabrial Erismann) am a master candidate with the Oeschger Center for Climate Change at the University of Bern. This project is run under the Supervision of the Geographical Institute of the University of Bern, with the close collaboration of the city of Biel/Bienne and with programming support from hammerdirt assocation.

Thank you to the city of Biel/Bienne for their support for this project