Urban Heat: Forward-Looking Climate Modelling for West-Africa: extra indicator

We produced actionable data on heat stress in cities to inform analysis and client dialogue on the part of World Bank teams. We applied an urban-scale climate modeling framework to generate datasets describing modeled heat stress exposure for present-day and future conditions under selected climate scenarios. This dataset serves as a supplement to the previous two datasets: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.11085333 and https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.11073297. It contains an extra indicator Heat Index (HI) based on the apparent temperature (AT) for 12 cities in west Africa.  

More details about the dataset: 

The dataset includes calculations for HI across three scenarios (present, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0) and three twenty-year periods (2001-2020, 2031-2050, and 2051-2070). The present period refers to 2001-2020, while the other two periods correspond to the two SSP scenarios.

The indicator is available in both NetCDF and GeoTiff formats. It is named as HIAT in the file name with extra information such as scenario, resolution, projection, etc. 

The indicator is calculated at a resolution from 100 m to 200 m (depending on the size of the city). Additionally, downscaled versions of the indicator is provided at a resolution of 30 m.

The Heat Index is calculated as the yearly average number of days when apparent temperature reaches 105 F. More information regarding the definition and calculation of HI can be found: Rohat, G., Flacke, J., Dosio, A., Dao, H., & Van Maarseveen, M. (2019). Projections of human exposure to dangerous heat in African cities under multiple socioeconomic and climate scenarios. Earth's Future, 7(5), 528-546.

Images for quick viewing in png format are available. 

The indicators in NetCDF and GeoTiff format as well as the visualized PNG files can be found in the {city}_HIAT.zip (for the cities with future projection) or {city}_present_HIAT.zip (for those cities without future projection).

More information about other indicators, including the simulation, methodology, all available data list, contact information, etc. can be found in the other two datasets.