In the context of city expansion and raise of awareness of climate change, urban planners are looking for methods and tools to take the urban heat island (UHI) into account. Urban heat island intensity (UHII) is an important metric used in measuring UHI effect. Nevertheless, its quantitative measurement has not yet been clearly addressed. Due to the limitation of meteorological stations either in number or location, the traditional method of calculating the temperature difference between urban and rural areas based on the meteorological station data fails to accurately describe the UHII of a city. In order to solve this problem, a classification schema "Local Climate Zones" (LCZ) was proposed by Steward and Oke. Nowadays, the satellite remote sensing imagery is widely used to reveal urban heat island phenomenon. Therefore, this paper applied the new framework of LCZ to the study of UHII in Fuzhou City, located in the center of the Fuzhou basin, southeast China, using remote sensing technology. Fuzhou City has witnessed a rapid urban expansion since the late 1970s. The fast expansion of the city has caused severe UHI phenomenon in the city. Thus, it has become the top one furnace city in China. This study reveals that LCZ based on remote sensing technology can effectively distinguish the thermal contrasts among all LCZ classes. Such contrasts are governed largely by height and spacing of buildings, pervious surface fraction, trees density and soil wetness. In addition, the LCZ can fully disclose the distribution patterns of UHI. In this study, we revealed a UHIILCZ of 6.73℃ for Fuzhou city on 27 September 2015, which indicates a significant UHI in the city.