Understanding Urban Climate: Impacts, Adaptation, and Resilience

Dear Colleagues,

Urban areas are facing an increasing number of challenges related to climate change, including rising temperatures, declining air quality, and intensifying flood risks. These hazards disproportionately impact historically marginalized communities due to legacies of systemic environmental and economic injustice. Emerging research employing satellite observations, geospatial modeling, and community science offers new insights into how climate stressors interact with urban form, land use, and health outcomes. 

This Special Issue seeks to advance our understanding of urban climate dynamics and support adaptation strategies that foster resilience and equity. We particularly encourage the submission of papers that focus on mid-sized cities and metropolitan regions, areas that remain under-represented in the literature but are subjected to distinctive climate risks and planning challenges. Comparative work across urban scales is also welcome. 

We are interested in original research, case studies, methods papers, and community-engaged scholarship that aligns with the journal’s focus on coupled human–environment systems, particularly those that integrate physical, social, and health data. This Special Issue aims to promote innovative research on urban climate resilience that not only analyzes urban climate hazards but also informs locally grounded solutions through community engagement and decision support tools. 

Suggested themes include the following:

• Urban heat islands and air pollution interactions.
• Climate and landscape impacts of discriminatory planning (e.g., redlining).
• The remote sensing and modeling of urban heat, flooding, and air quality.
• Social vulnerability, health outcomes, and environmental justice.
• Participatory resilience strategies and tools for adaptation.
• Comparative studies of large and small cities and urban–suburban gradients.

Dr. Stephanie Spera
Dr. Todd R. Lookingbill
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Climate is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• air pollution
• climate resilience
• community-based
• environmental equity and justice
• flooding
• stormwater
• geospatial modeling
• health disparities
• landscape-scale climate impacts
• mid-sized cities
• remote sensing
• social vulnerability
• socio-environmental landscapes
• suburban climate impacts
• urban climate
• urban heat island