Аннотация:Urban Heat Island effect and its characteristics is one of the main research directions in modern urban
climatology. Of course, its characteristics differs in different climate zones, and by this moment, there is
only a few papers about UHI (Magee et al, 1999) in high latitudes, for the cities over the Polar Circle and
especially about behavior of the heat islands during the polar night, while anthropogenic heat is the main
source of thermal energy. The main goal of this study is partly describe climatology of UHI formation in
big cities of Arctic zone. In 2013-2014 we led complex experimental research of the Urban Heat Island
(UHI) of 4 biggest Arctic Cities (Murmansk, Norilsk, Apatity and Vorkuta), which were obtained during 5
expeditions of Russian Geographic Society. This investigations allowed to collect unique data about UHI
in high latitudes. Analysis of the collected data showed the existence of UHI with the difference between
city center and surrounding landscape up to few degrees Celcius (up to 5-7 in Norilsk). UHI characteristics
in view of synoptic conditions was analyzed for several typical situations, for some cities (Norilsk) the
negative correlation of the UHI power with air temperature was determined. Also potential cost of 1C
degree error for UHI prediction in municipal heat production systems was evaluated: in Apatity – 686 mWt
(1000€ per day), in Norilsk - 2691 mWt (3900€ per day) The reported study was supported by RGS (Russian
Geographical Society ), research project No.27/2013-NZ