Drone flies over city centre for thermal imaging

On Friday, 7 July at 12 noon, the City of Chemnitz Environmental Agency will launch a drone at the Karl Marx Monument to fly over two areas of the city for detailed thermal imaging and to identify heat hotspots.

Representatives of the media are cordially invited to attend.

A representative of the City of Chemnitz's environmental department and the managing director of the Thuringian Institute for Sustainability and Climate Protection GmbH (ThINK) from Jena will be available to answer questions.

Please note: A clear, cloudless sky, dry weather and a consistently high daytime temperature are essential for the drone recordings. This ideal weather is forecast for Friday. However, if this does not materialise, the date will have to be postponed until next week.

The drone will take detailed thermal images of the city centre (Karl Marx Monument, Stadthalle, Stadthallenpark) and the lower Kaßberg (André-Gymnasium, Andrépark and the surrounding area) during the day and after sunset. The data will be incorporated into a project to identify heat islands in the city of Chemnitz using remote sensing data, which has been commissioned by the State Office for the Environment, Agriculture and Geology (LfULG) in cooperation with the City of Chemnitz Environmental Agency.

The results of the project are an important data basis for the city's heat action plan. Particularly vulnerable areas are localised in the resulting maps. It also shows how high the heat load is overall during the entire summer half-year in the individual areas of the city. The Thuringian Institute for Sustainability and Climate Protection GmbH (ThINK) was commissioned to carry out the analysis.

The background to the project is the increasing summer heat load in Chemnitz caused by climate change. The city must increasingly adapt to this and particularly vulnerable groups of the city's population must be protected. The City of Chemnitz's Integrated Climate Protection Programme was adopted by the City Council in June 2023. It also includes a detailed situation analysis of climate change in Chemnitz, linked to climate change adaptation measures.

After 2018, 2019 and 2020, 2022 was the fourth warmest year in Saxony since weather records began in 1881 and was categorised as "extremely too warm". The reference period for the analysis is the period from 1961 to 1990, meaning that the four warmest years in Saxony (since 1881) all occurred in the last five years (source: F. Böttcher, J. Franke, U. Schreiber and D. e. a. Rumpf, "Wetter trifft auf Klima -Jahresrückblick 2022 - Fachbeitrag", Saxon State Office for the Environment, Agriculture and Geology (LfULG), German Weather Service (DWD), Dresden, 2022).

Climate projections prepared by the LfULG for the city of Chemnitz assume that the number of so-called "hot days" will triple on average by 2050 and increase ninefold by 2100. "Hot days" are defined as days on which the maximum daily temperature reaches or exceeds 30 degrees Celsius. There are similar trends in the increase in so-called "tropical nights", when the temperature at night does not cool down below 20 degrees Celsius. What sounds like a holiday at first is a major strain on the circulatory system for many people, especially in densely built-up areas, as urban areas in particular have a heat island effect - i.e. additional warming compared to the surrounding area.

Mitigating the effects of climate change is an important task that the City of Chemnitz is pursuing with the Climate Adaptation Programme 2023 to 2025 that has just been adopted. However, the heat action plan is about adapting to changes that are already occurring. The city of Chemnitz is pursuing the goal of ensuring that particularly sensitive population groups are well prepared and protected.