41 anos do satélite Landsat termal e a sua contribuição no estudo da ilha de calor urbana de superfície (ICUS) na Região Metropolitana do Rio de Janeiro (RMRJ)

This paper presents the contribution of the Landsat thermal satellite, since its inception in 1984, to the study of the Urban Surface Heat Island (USHI) in the Metropolitan Area of Rio de Janeiro (MARJ). The objective is to map the USHI using the Land Surface Temperature (LST), derived from the thermal bands of the Landsat satellite, and the vegetation cover using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), according to the seasons of the year; to rank the hottest/mildest cities and to analyze the temporal/seasonal trend of the USHI and NDVI in the two hottest cities. The extensive Landsat time series favored the temporal-spatial analysis of four decades of LST and NDVI. The results show that the MARJ is a favorable space for the occurrence of an urban heat island, spatially polynucleated, since the complexity of spaces and land uses in the metropolis offers a diversity of nuclei, whether in the Central Area, North Zone and West Zone of the capital or in the urban interior of Baixada Fluminense and metropolitan East, with different temperature magnitudes. This fact suggests a concept more appropriate to the phenomenon of urban climate in metropolises: the Metropolitan Heat Island (surface).