How does urban heat vary from one neighbourhood to another, and at what time of day is the Urban Heat Island effect strongest? A case study developed through CLIMAAX-NIC is helping answer these questions in Nicosia, Cyprus, by combining climate physics, field measurements and artificial intelligence.

Over two months in summer 2025, sensors mounted on municipal vehicles recorded nearly 700,000 temperature measurements along the city’s streets. These data were used to train an AI model capable of mapping urban heat at a resolution of 200 × 200 metres, revealing how the temperature difference between the city and surrounding rural areas changes throughout the day.

The results show that central Nicosia can be around 2.5-3°C warmer than surrounding rural areas in the late afternoon and evening. In the morning, however, parts of the city can be cooler, partly due to shading from buildings. During an extreme heatwave in August 2025, the urban–rural temperature difference almost disappeared as rural areas heated up.

The team has also developed an online platform that allows citizens to explore visualisations of climate risks in their neighbourhoods. By making local heat patterns more visible, the platform can support a better understanding of climate risks at the local level and help inform future adaptation planning.

The full data-supported narrative of the Nicosia case study describes the methodology and key findings in more detail, while the online climate-risk platform allows users to explore the results through interactive visualisations.