Urban green space growth impact on surface temperature distribution / Siti Nor Afzan Buyadi, Wan Mohd Naim Wan Mohd and Alamah Misni.

Trees and vegetation play a vital role to mitigate urban heat island (UHI) effects. Land use, vegetation growth detection and land surface temperature (LST) maps of two different dates are generated from Landsat 5 TM (1991 and 2009) in the city of Shah Alam. The conversion of natural green areas into residential and commercial development significantly increases the LST. The result reveals that mature trees in urban green space help to mitigate the effects of UHI as well as to sustain the urban development

Land covers and climate impacts on land surface temperature in Putrajaya, Malaysia.

This study investigates the influence of surface heterogeneity on land surface temperature (LST). The land cover changes evaluation and historical climate data comparison were used in this study. Land cover, Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalised Difference Built-up Index (NDBI) and LST maps are produced to quantify the impacts of urbanization towards the surface thermal behaviour. Urbanization was set in the year 1999 to 2006. While urbanization continued in 2009, the surface temperature was lower than in 2006. The sea level was notably high during 2006, suggesting the loss of ice extent and evident to the climate change effects. Therefore, the fluctuation of temperature from 1999 to 2009 was manifestly influenced by green space and climatic response and was not solely caused by urbanization

Land covers and climate impacts on land surface temperature in Putrajaya, Malaysia / Siti Aekbal Salleh … [et al.]

This study investigates the influence of surface heterogeneity to the land surface temperature (LST). The land cover changes evaluation and historical climate data comparison were used in this study. Land cover, Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalised Difference Built-up Index (NDBI) and LST maps are produced to quantify the impacts of urbanization towards the surface thermal behaviour. The urbanization was set on years 1999 to 2006. While urbanization continued in 2009, the surface temperature was lower than that of 2006. The sea level was notably high during 2006, suggesting the lost of ice extent and evident to the climate change effects. Therefore, the fluctuation of temperature in 1999 to 2009 manifestly influenced by green space and climatic response and not solely caused by urbanization

Kuala Lumpur city of tomorrow: integration of geospatial urban climatic information in city planning.

Urbanization brings many benefits. However, due to rapid and uncontrollable urbanization, the urban environment has been dramatically degraded. As a developing country, Malaysia is facing urbanization processes throughout the country and most of the population have migrated to dwell in the cities. Malaysia has envisions designing smart, liveable and comfortable cities, there is a great need to maintain the sustainability of the cities to ensure that the quality of life of urban dwellers is preserved, especially in terms of the environment. This paper reviews the concept of urban climatic mapping and its potential implementation in a Malaysian urban environment. The key elements and parameters of the urban climatic mapping are also discussed. Since being introduced 40 years ago, urban climatic maps have attracted worldwide interest. It is time for Malaysia to have its own urban climatic maps to assist the decision makers to make an informed decision on the development and its impacts to the urban climate conditions in particular.. It is the responsibility of mapmakers to share lessons and experiences with city planners and policy-makers to bring new planning environments that include climate as one of the important aspects to be considered

Functional relation of land surface albedo with climatological variables: a review on remote sensing techniques and recent research developments

Surface albedo has been documented as one of the Essential Climate Variables (ECV) of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) that governs the Earth's Radiation Budget. The availability of surface albedo data is necessary for a comprehensive environmental modelling study. Thus, both temporal and spatial scale issues need to be rectified. This study reports about the availability of surface albedo data through in-situ and remote sensing satellite observations. In this paper, we reviewed the existing models for surface albedo derivation and various initiatives taken by related environmental agencies in order to understand the issues of climate with respect to surface albedo. This investigation evaluated the major activities on albedo-related research specifically for the retrieval methods used to derive the albedo values. Two main existing albedo measurement methods are derived through in-situ measurement and remotely sensed observations. In-situ measurement supported with number of instruments and techniques such aspyrheliometers, pyranometers and Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) and remotely sensed observations using angularly integrated Bi-directional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) by both geostationary and polar orbit satellites. The investigation results reveals that the temporal and spatial scaling is the major issues when the albedo values are needed for microclimatic study, i.e. high-resolution time-series analyses and at heterogeneity and impervious surface. Thus, an improved technique of albedo retrieval at better spatial and temporal scale is required to fulfil the need for such kind of studies. Amongst many others, there are two downscaling methods that have been identified to be used in resolving the spatial scaling biased issues: Smoothing Filter-based Intensity Modulation (SFIM) and Pixel Block Intensity Modulation (PBIM). The temporal issues can be resolved using the multiple regression techniques of land surface temperature, selected air quality parameters, aerosol and daily skylight

Spontaneous repositioning of incarcerated gravid uterus following general anaesthesia: a case report and review of literature

A 28 year old primigravida at 16 weeks pregnancy presented with voiding difficulties, pelvic pain and acute urinary retention. Clinical and ultrasound examination were suggestive of Incarcerated Uterus and diagnosis was confirmed by a pelvic MRI. Manual repositioning under anaesthesia was planned following a failed procedure in the outpatient clinic. Immediately post induction with general anaesthesia, interestingly spontaneous repositioning of the uterus occurred without any manual manipulation. This is the first case report describing a spontaneous repositioning of incarcerated uterus following general anaesthesia

Kreativiti guru Pendidikan Seni

The main purpose of this study is to compare the creativity of trained and untrained art education teachers. This is a descriptive study that uses the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking as its instrument to obtain the creative thinking indexes of the teachers. Subjects of the study comprise 34 trained art education teachers and 45 untrained art education teachers from 22 secondary schools located in the district of Hulu Langat, Selangor. The results of the study indicated that trained art education teachers are significantly more creative than untrained art education teachers in the aspects of fluency and elaboration. This suggests that trained art education teachers can understand creative ideas better and elaborate on them in more detail than untrained art education teachers. The researcher suggests that in future teachers training programmes should place more emphasis on creativity

Land cover impacts towards thermal variation in the Kuala Lumpur City.

Physical geography and urban characteristics influence the urban climate conditions. Built-up areas, green urban parks, forest reserves, streets and terrain constitute the climatic interactions within urban areas. These have led to the variation of the urban climate condition throughout the world. Thus, in studying urban climate, the impacts of these factors are crucial to be examined. This study aims to examine the effects of six important factors, namely built-up areas, green covers, terrain elevation, building volume, surface roughness and land use type, which contribute to the variation of the urban climate condition within the Kuala Lumpur City. In this study, the effects of the six factors (urban parameters) towards the air surface temperature variation were statistically tested. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and the remote sensing technique, the data needed for the analyses were extracted. The Geographical Information System (GIS) was employed as the analysis platform during the study. Based on the Spearman’s rho and Mann-Whitney U tests, it was identified that the six urban parameters and the air surface temperature variation are correlated. The further investigation conducted using the Kruskall-Wallis test has identified that only five of the urban parameters showed significant effects toward the air surface temperature variation, which are built-up areas, green covers, terrain elevation, building volume and surface roughness while the land use type was excluded. The findings of this study are very crucial as a pioneer research to integrate the urban climatic information in the urban planning decision making in tropical cities like Kuala Lumpur

Impacts of Lateral Boundary Condition Resolution in Tropical Urban Climate Modelling for Kuala Lumpur

Choosing the best LBCs is still debated among researchers due to the errors resulted. However, several recommendations have been documented to control the errors propagated by LBCs. One of the recommendations is employing higher resolutions LBCs. In the present, many LBCs are developed with various resolutions; spatially and temporally, for many applications but no claims regarding the best LBCs for tropical climate modelling have yet been documented. Therefore, this study intends to analyse the impacts of lateral boundary condition resolution during numerical downscaling within a tropical city. This study serves as a site-specific investigation to determine the suitable LBCs for the focused study area. Two widely used LBCs with different resolutions were utilized to initiate the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) simulation model. The performances of the two LBCs were compared using statistical tests and analyses. The study has found that the LBC with higher resolutions excels the other LBC during inter-monsoon season. Nevertheless, it was identified that both LBCs were able to provide reliable reconstruction of the tropical climate condition of the Kuala Lumpur City as portrayed by similar results obtained. Thus, it is concluded that both LBCs can be employed in numerical downscaling for tropical urban regions similar to the Kuala Lumpur City