Local Cooling Contribution

Local Cooling Contribution is EcoIntel’s measure of how much cooler a property runs than comparable neighbouring land, and whether that cooling holds up when the weather turns hot. It is read from satellite surface temperature, not modelled from vegetation, and it is reported alongside the Land Health Score as an independent outcome, never blended into it.

What it measures

A landscape that infiltrates rain, holds soil moisture and transpires through living plants turns some of the sun’s energy into water vapour instead of heat. That is evaporative cooling, and its signature is a cooler surface. Local Cooling Contribution captures that signature directly:

• Against comparable neighbours, on the same overpass. For every satellite pass, the property’s surface temperature is compared with a matched ring of surrounding land (cover, elevation and coast matched; 500 m inner gap to 10 km). Same sun, same day, so climate and season cancel out and what is left is the property’s own contribution.
• At midday, in the growing season. The comparison uses midday overpasses (about 10:30 to 14:30 solar time) from April to September, the peak-heat window, because that is when cooling matters and it removes time-of-day noise between sites. Only passes on which both the property and the comparable land are clear of cloud (90% or more of each) are used.
• Under heat especially. The headline figure is the contrast on the hottest days: the mean difference over the hottest third of those passes, ranked by the temperature of the comparable land. A property that pulls further ahead of its neighbours as the heat rises is buffering; one that falls behind is amplifying.

The 1-to-9 scale

The result is banded 1 to 9, on the same grammar as the Land Health Score but on a buffering axis that is symmetric around a neutral midpoint:

Band	State	°C vs comparable land, hottest days	Meaning
9	Strongly heat-buffering	≤ −2.25	Much cooler than comparable land on the hottest days
8	Heat-buffering	−2.25 to −1.75	Clearly cooler than comparable land on the hottest days
7	Cooling	−1.75 to −1.25	Cooler than comparable land on the hottest days
6	Mildly cooling	−1.25 to −0.75	A little cooler than comparable land on the hottest days
5	In line	−0.75 to +0.75	In line with comparable land: the difference is inside the measurement’s systematic uncertainty
4	Mildly warming	+0.75 to +1.25	A little warmer than comparable land on the hottest days
3	Warming	+1.25 to +1.75	Warmer than comparable land on the hottest days
2	Strongly warming	+1.75 to +2.25	Clearly warmer than comparable land on the hottest days
1	Heat-amplifying	≥ +2.25	Much warmer than comparable land on the hottest days

The scale is fixed and physical, not fitted to any cohort. Band 5 is level with comparable land: within ±0.75 °C on the hottest days, the measurement’s systematic uncertainty, and ±0.75 °C itself counts as band 5. Beyond that, each band is a further half degree, cooler raising the band and warmer lowering it; a figure exactly on a boundary beyond band 5 takes the band further from 5 (−1.25 °C is band 7, +1.25 °C is band 3). The band is set by the hottest-day difference alone; how the gap changes as the heat rises is the buffer slope, reported beside it. Because the scale is fixed, a band means the same thing on every property and in every ecoregion. Because the comparison is always local, the °C values hold across climates: “−2°C” means two degrees cooler than local comparable land in a cool maritime climate or a hot continental one alike.

What sits behind the band

• Hottest-day difference: the degrees cooler or warmer than comparable land on the hottest days, the figure that sets the band. Inside band 5 no degree figure is given.
• Buffer slope: how much further the property pulls ahead (or falls behind) per degree of regional heat, the clearest single expression of the dynamic. Like the degree figure, it is shown only outside band 5.

Not part of this measure

The land’s own evaporative cooling is a separate measure, with its own 1 to 9 score, and can differ from the Local Cooling Contribution. It is built from the property’s own energy balance, not from a comparison with neighbours, and covers the energy and water the land moves into cooling (MW and litres per hectare, set mostly by climate), the share of that cooling done by living plants, how often the land is actively green, its reflectivity (albedo), and whether its cooling holds up on the hottest, driest days. Those figures describe the property’s own cooling engine; the band describes how the property compares with the land around it.

Relationship to the Land Health Score

Cooling is a consequence of a working water cycle, so it belongs on the platform’s 1-to-9 grammar, exactly as carbon is reported as an outcome of the four ecosystem processes and never as a fifth. It is shown beside the Land Health Score and is never summed into it: the score already contains the water-cycle function that produces the cooling, so folding the cooling back in would count the same thing twice.

In practice the two are independent measurements. The Land Health Score is read from vegetation and moisture proxies; the cooling band is read from surface temperature against real neighbours. Because the cooling band is a neighbour-relative contrast rather than an absolute score, a property can carry a strong buffer on modest land-health, or the reverse. That independence is the point: the cooling band adds a measured, outside check that the scores alone cannot give.

Honest limits

This is a developing, indicative read. The band is shown wherever there are at least 30 usable midday satellite passes in the growing season (clear of cloud over both the property and the comparable land). Within ±0.75 °C of comparable land on the hottest days the property reads band 5, “in line with comparable land,” and no degree figure or slope is claimed; beyond that the band, the degree figure and the buffer slope are shown. Where there is no thermal record, or too few usable passes, it reads “reference not available.” The half-degree steps beyond band 5 are finer than the measurement’s systematic uncertainty, so the band is best read as a communication scale rather than a precision instrument. Local and relative, never planetary, and never converted into or added to the carbon figures.