ORIGINAL PAPER Evaluation of spatio-temporal pattern of surface urban heat island phenomena at Jorhat, India Rituraj Neog 1 & Shukla Acharjee 1 & Jiten Hazarika 2 Received: 16 June 2018 /Accepted: 17 April 2019 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2019 Abstract The study has been conducted using IR (infrared) thermometer over 16 sites at Jorhat town for a period of 5 months. The study area constitutes urban, suburban, and peripheral rural locations. The study focuses on depicting the diurnal, monthly, and seasonal dynamics of ST condition of Jorhat town. The diurnal pattern revealed the peak ST at midday for all months, while the lowest ST is in the morning during July, September, and October, and conversely in the afternoon period during the months of November to December. The month of October displayed a maximum ST at 38.30 °C. Though, the maximum range of ST has been identified in the month of November (9.48 °C). Seasonally, the overall monsoon depicts a higher ST than post-monsoon and winter. But remarkably, the maximum intensity of ST was investigated in the post-monsoonal period. Interestingly, the RST and BWT displayed a dissimilar pattern showing the peak ST in the month of July and October while the lowest is during in the month of December respectively. The concentration of built environment with less vegetation cover is considered as a causative factor for the development of the peak ST all throughout the study period in the central part of the town. Keywords Surface temperature (ST) . Maximum range . Diurnal pattern and built-up Introduction Urban areas normally show a higher temperature than the surrounding rural area, which is known as the heat island effect (Li et al. 2018). It is considered as a well-documented phenomenon of the urban environment. The phenomena vary with time and scale as a consequence of meteorological, loca- tional, and urban characteristics (Oke 1987). The urban heat island effect develops in many great cities and can consider- ably impact the quality of life of the affected region (Joshi et al. 2015). Luke Howard, in 1833, hypothesized that the surplus of heat energy in towns and cities during the summer season was due to a greater absorption of solar radiation by the vertical surfaces of a city and the lack of sufficient humidity for evaporation (Gartland 2010). Heat island is generally categorized into the surface heat island, the boundary layer, and canopy layer heat island (Oke 1982). The former develops over the land surface while later on the air above the urban surface (Voogt 2004). The land surface is a complex feature that is described as a combination of vegetative cover, water body, soil, and concrete structure. As a consequence of which LST (land surface temperature) varies spatially (Zhang et al. 2008), LST becomes a prime importance to study the urban climates (Voogt and Oke 2003). LST is also known as bright- ness or skin temperature, which is determined by the long- wave radiation emitted from all the terrestrial matter (Becker and Li 1995). An urban area, composed mostly of impervious concrete structure with less vegetation and water body, leads to an intense LST causing surface urban heat island (SUHI) phenomena. The ST normally varies with different surface materials with equal insolation (Chui et al. 2018). The surface urban heat island intensity is resolved by variations of ST between the rural/suburban and urban area with similar geo- environmental conditions. Sultana and Satyanarayana 2018 examined the rural-urban contrast of LST using satellite data on major cities of India and identified a SUHI intensity of 9.9 °C and even 10.3 °C at Mumbai and Hyderabad during the winter period. Though, Kumar et al. (2017) estimated a rural-urban contrast of LST of 40–50.49 °C over built-up areas Editorial Handling: Zhihua Zhang * Rituraj Neog rituraj.neog08@gmail.com 1 Centre for Studies in Geography, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh, India 2 Department of Statistics, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh, India Arabian Journal of Geosciences (2019) 12:316 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-019-4484-z