ИСТИНА

The urban ‘heat island’ vertical range in Moscow region has been studied using collected data of in situ measurements of air temperature T by sensors on TV tower, high meteorological mast and radiosondes. The tower is situated at Ostankino district inside Moscow close to the city centre and has a height of 540 m; mast of 310 m height is located in Obninsk on a distance about 100 km to the South from Moscow centre; radiosondes are launched in Dolgoprudny on 2 km to the North from the city margin twice a day and measure T with a spatial resolution of 100 m up to the height of 1 km. As one knows the ‘cross-over’ effect is an intersection between nocturnal profiles of T above the city centre and suburbs as a result of higher intensity of the surface inversion outside a city than inside it. Hence, since some height at night the air temperature above city, especially its central part, is less than at rural zone, i.e. the elevated nocturnal 'cool island' exists. Vice versa, in the afternoon the air temperature above a city is higher due to more super-adiabatic vertical gradient of T in the urban ground air layer. Evidently the vertical range of the urban thermal anomaly is equal to the lowest level at which T becomes the same inside and outside a city. Accordingly to our data in average of eight years (from 2006 to 2013) this height in average of a day for Moscow conditions is equal to 300 m. Besides, a dynamics of the air temperature in the lower troposphere above Moscow region (in the air layer up to 4 km height) during last two decades (since 1991 till 2013) was studied in details by the data of radiosondes and high mast. A tendency to some deceleration of current climate warming has been detected at the recent time.