The urban heat island (UHI) effect is strongly modulated by urban-scale changes to the aerodynamic, thermal, and radiative properties of the Earth’s land surfaces. Interest in this phenomenon, both from the climatological and public health perspectives, has led to hundreds of UHI studies, mostly conducted on a city-by-city basis. These studies, however, do not provide a complete picture of the UHI for administrative units using a consistent methodology. To address this gap, we characterize clear-sky surface UHI (SUHI) intensities for all urbanized areas in the United States using a modified Simplified Urban-Extent (SUE) approach by combining a fusion of remotely-sensed data products with multiple US census-defined administrative urban delineations. We find the highest daytime SUHI intensities during summer (1.91 ± 0.97 °C) for 418 of the 497 urbanized areas, while the winter daytime SUHI intensity (0.87 ± 0.45 °C) is the lowest in 439 cases. Since urban vegetation has been frequently cited as an effective way to mitigate UHI, we use NDVI, a satellite-derived proxy for live green vegetation, and US census tract delineations to characterize how vegetation density modulates inter-urban, intra-urban, and inter-seasonal variability in SUHI intensity. In addition, we also explore how elevation and distance from the coast confound SUHI estimates. To further quantify the uncertainties in our estimates, we analyze and discuss some limitations of these satellite-derived products across climate zones, particularly issues with using remotely sensed radiometric temperature and vegetation indices as proxies for urban heat and vegetation cover. We demonstrate an application of this spatially explicit dataset, showing that for the majority of the urbanized areas, SUHI intensity is lower in census tracts with higher median income and higher proportion of white people. Our analysis also suggests that poor and non-white urban residents may suffer the possible adverse effects of summer SUHI without reaping the potential benefits (e.g., warmer temperatures) during winter, though establishing this result requires future research using more comprehensive heat stress metrics. This study develops new methodological advancements to characterize SUHI and its intra-urban variability at levels of aggregation consistent with sources of other socioeconomic information, which can be relevant in future inter-disciplinary research and as a possible screening tool for policy-making. The dataset developed in this study is visualized at: https://datadrivenlab.users.earthengine.app/view/usuhiapp.

城市热岛（UHI）效应受到城市规模对地球陆地表面的空气动力学，热学和辐射特性的变化的强烈调节。从气候学和公共卫生的角度对这种现象的兴趣，导致了数百项UHI研究，其中大多数是在逐个城市的基础上进行的。但是，这些研究并未使用一致的方法来提供行政单位的UHI的完整情况。为了解决这一差距，我们采用改进的简化城市范围（SUE）方法，将遥感数据产品与多次美国人口普查相结合，对美国所有城市化地区的晴空地面UHI（SUHI）强度进行表征。定义行政区划。我们发现夏季的白天SUHI强度最高（1.91±0。在497个城市化地区中，有418个城市地区的418个地区的温度为97°C），而冬季白天的SUHI强度（0.87±0.45°C）最低。由于人们经常提到城市植被是缓解超高热的有效方法，因此我们使用NDVI（卫星衍生的绿色生活植被代理）和美国人口普查区划来描述植被密度如何调节城市间，城市内和城市间的差异。强度的季节性变化。此外，我们还探索了海拔高度和距海岸的距离如何混淆SUHI估算值。为了进一步量化估计中的不确定性，我们分析和讨论了这些卫星衍生产品在整个气候区的局限性，特别是使用遥感辐射温度和植被指数作为城市热量和植被覆盖的代表的问题。我们证明了该空间明确数据集的应用，表明在大多数城市化地区，人口中位数较高且白人比例较高的人口普查地区的SUHI强度较低。我们的分析还表明，贫困和非白人城市居民可能会遭受夏季SUHI可能产生的不利影响，而不会在冬季收获潜在的收益（例如，温度升高），尽管要确定这一结果需要将来使用更全面的热应力指标进行研究。这项研究开发了新的方法学进展，以在与其他社会经济信息来源一致的聚合水平上表征SUHI及其城市内部的变异性，这可能与将来的跨学科研究相关，并且可能是决策的筛选工具。