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The role of urban parks in the microclimatic conditions of cities in summer is investigated in this paper through monitoring campaigns carried out at the Beijing Olympic forestry park. Five kinds of land cover, namely urban woods, lawn, bare concrete cover, water areas and wetlands were selected to study on the temperature, humidity and human comfort. The air temperature and relative humidity were measured once every two hours from 8:00 to 20:00 every day and continuously three days in July 2010. The results showed that the microclimate of these five kinds of land cover had significant differences during the day. In general, the air temperature of these five types of land cover complied with the order during the middle of the day: bare concrete cover > wetlands > lawn > water areas > woods, with reversed order in the late afternoon when the air temperature of the lawn became the lowest. Compared with the bare concrete cover, the other four types of land cover can decrease temperature 1.0-3.5°C at noon. Finally, the human thermal comfort of the five kinds of land cover was assessed with the discontent index (DI). The DI in five kinds of land cover was the highest at 14:00, and the lowest at 8:00. The woods had the lowest DI while the bare concrete cover had the highest one at 14:00, and the lawn cover had the lowest DI while the wetlands had the highest one at 20:00.
