India, as a developing country is undergoing accelerated urbanization. However, this rapid and often
unplanned urban growth has become a major concern as it significantly alters land surface
characteristics. This leads to increased land surface temperatures (LSTs) which contribute to
deteriorating air quality, energy overconsumption, and adverse health conditions, posing substantial
challenges to sustainable urban climate management. The current study focuses on the identification
and analysis of the evolution of thermal hotspots across 30 districts of Odisha, a rapidly developing
tropical Indian state utilizing 20 years of datasets from the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard Terra and Aqua, and Sentinel-2 satellite missions for the pre-
monsoon season from 2017 to 2023. The analysis revealed that built-up areas exhibited significantly ...
