Excerpt of an article from the New Scientist, 01 December 2008 by Mark Buchanan (h/t to Richard Hegarty)
EVEN if we turn to clean energy to reduce carbon emissions, the planet might carry on warming anyway due to the heat released into the environment by our ever-increasing consumption of energy.
This picture, taken with a thermal imaging camera, reveals how much heat is being emitted by City Hall in London (Image: National Pictures)
That’s the contentious possibility raised by Nick Cowern and Chihak Ahn of the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at Newcastle University, UK. They argue that human energy consumption could begin to contribute significantly to global warming a century from now.
Cowern and Ahn considered an emissions scenario proposed by James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and others. Under this scenario, which envisages greenhouse gases being cut significantly through phasing out coal over the next 40 years, Cowern and Ahn calculate that the greenhouse effect will start to diminish by 2050, stabilising the climate.
Read more here
Consider then UHI, and my recent measurement of a temperature transect from Reno, NV
Here is the result of my South to North transect driving Virgina Street overlaid on a Google Earth image oriented to match the timeline of the transect:
Click for larger image
It seems clear that waste heat is already having an effect, because the UHI bubble from Reno has been shown by NOAA to affect the USHCN weather station there, which caused them to move the station once. They even include this in their own training manual.
What was amazing is that they’d already determined that there were significant problems with this USHCN station placement that contributed a significant warming bias to the record.
In fact, the National Weather Service includes the UHI factor in one of it’s training course ( NOAA Professional Competency Unit 6 ) using Reno, NV and Baltimore, MD as examples. The Reno station had to be moved because it was producing an erroneous record, and the Baltimore station has so much bias (because it existed on a rooftop of a downtown building) that they simply closed it in 1999.
From that manual:
Reno’s busy urban airport has seen the growth of an urban heat bubble on its north end.
The corresponding graph of mean annual minimum temperature (average of 365 nighttime
minimums each year) has as a consequence been steadily rising. When the new
ASOS sensor was installed, the site was moved to the much cooler south end of the
runway. Nearby records indicate that the two cool post-ASOS years should have been
warmer rather than cooler. When air traffic controllers asked for a location not so close
to nearby trees (for better wind readings), the station was moved back. The first move
was documented, the second was not. The climate record shows both the steady warming
of the site, as well as the big difference in overnight temperature between one end of this
flat and seemingly homogeneous setting, an observation borne out by automobile
traverses around the airport at night.
They were also kind enough to provide a photo essay of their own as well as a graph. You can click the aerial photo to get a Google Earth interactive view of the area.
This is NOAA’s graph showing the changes to the official climate record when they made station moves:
Source for 24a and 24b: NOAA PCU6 Internal Training manual, 2004-2007
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We are in the bizarre situation where the logical absurdities regarding climate fear mongering are not yet see for what they are.
Studies like this will hopefully hurry the day when people see just how ridiculous AGW is.
Scott,
Andrew Bolt has demolished the lemur claims:-
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/possums_not_fried/
On the original topic, i commented on this blog some time ago that the average city temperature gauge is measuring civilisation, not climate, due to the waste heat from all our energy use. Air con, heating, transport – all reject heat to the area.
So, our only hope to save mankind is genocide? Or maybe we should just get used to being cold.
From the article about Cowern and Ahn:
In the meantime, the cleanest energy options are wind and tidal power, say the researchers, as these tap into energy flows already present on Earth without significantly affecting them.
I would like to see a study supporting that statement. It seems to me that if we supply the world’s future energy demand from wind and tides, there will be an effect.
No way should we assume that interference with airflow and ocean currents on a scale sufficient for world class power production will be without consequences.
It would make a lot of sense to coat roofs, pavements, e.t.c. with Titanium dioxide. This would not only reflect much of the light, but would also clean the air. It is a very good scrubber for NOx.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000844.html
Hmmm, maybe there is something to this … considering that about two thirds of the _energy_ extracted from coal or nuclear fuels is dumped as heat straight into rivers or oceans, or via cooling towers direct into the atmosphere, before it even leaves the power station as electricity [http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf03.html], has this effect ever been seriously considered?
And comments by John S. (11:13:01) about jet exhausts has got me thinking … heat being the main by-product of combustion; over 60% of the world oil production is used for transport (from page 35 Key Energy Statistics, 2008, International Energy Agency), and most of this goes straight out the exhaust pipe as heat.
So actually, we might be adding quite a bit of heat directly to the atmosphere or oceans. We can see the con-trails, but planes cruising at altitude can hardly be considered part of the “Urban Heat Island”.
I wonder how relevant all this extra heat would be, if we compared it to the effect of greenhouse gases?
Hotlink
“Isn’t this essentialy the uban heat island effect? Can’t say I’m suprised in the least.”
No, waste heat is not the same as the UHI, urbanization, or land use changes in general.
Waste heat, specifically, is the heat generated from industrial processes, whereas the UHI is heat retained by our concrete jungles.
15e12/(4*1.3e14) = ~0.029 W/m² of forcing from waste heat currently, but could approach 1 W/m² in a couple hundred years.
“Their calculations show that if global energy use increases at about 1 per cent per year – slower than in the recent past – then by 2100, the heat dissipated could become significant enough to cancel out the benefits of cuts in emissions”
By jove, they may be right! Cutting emissions will do practically nothing in terms of reducing warming, since our C02 emissions have little warming effect anyway. So, yes, the miniscule global warming effect of heat dissipations could, in fact, offset the miniscule effect of cutting C02 emissions. The question is, of course, is that a wise way to spend trillions of dollars?
According to de Laat and Maurellis
http://www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.co.uk/pdf/deLaat.pdf
there’s a strong correlation between measured warming and industrialization. If they’re correct, as long as we have an industrialzied society, we’ll have measurable warming around cities, even if we go 1005 to wind, nuclear, solar, etc. The measured warming is just a proxy for industrial output- A. McIntire
Anthony
I think your 24 minute drive through Reno and the graphic is compelling to illustrate the UHI to the layman. It would make a convincing argument if covered a variety of urban areas. I am constantly fried by the argument that UHI is “insignificant”. I bet you could mobilize an army of volunteers to do “drive by’s” to generate data. Just develop some standards and put them out there to see what happens.
Assuming complete combustion of coal and natural gas, around 10^15 BTU/year. Oil (at 60%) adds far more, 10^17 btu. Total energy by combustion of fossil fuels (with a wild assumption that all of it goes into the air) is around 10^20 J/yr. With an atmospheric mass of 5*10^21 grams, 0.02 degree C rise per year. Which could explain everything. Or not.
Back of the envelope calculations, late at night.
This probably isn’t the biggest thing we have to worry about.
I don’t have access to the paper, but the hypothesis seems to be that waste heat is retained by structures and land surfaces. This waste heat will be slowly liberated into the environment over periods longer than a year.
This hypothesis requires us to believe that the effect is greater than the seasonal effect of heating and cooling, February compared with August. Unless I have missed something, this does not seem possible. Can the hypothesis be tested? Is it worth testing?
Off topic.
Anthony,
I have an idea for a temperature website – can I email you the idea directly?
I would greatly value your opinion.
Thanks.
Fred Colbourne:
Nonsense.
A building, once power is lost, cools to ambient in 36-72 hours, if no doors or windows are opened. If opened, and circulation can flow? Even less.
A street, bridge, or parking lot cools to ambient overnight – if traffic is stopped.
Every erg, every BTU of energy that we produce is turned (eventually) into heat: even cars. Trains. Busses. Trucks. What does not leave the exhaust as chemical energy (higher pressure, higher temperature gasses at lower chemical energy) get turned into heat in the brakes, into wind energy as air friction, into rolling friction in bearing and tires, etc. Power plants turn chemical (nuclear) energy into rejected heat in the cooling towers and cooling water, air resistance of the induced draft fans and smokestack exhaust fans, rolling resistance in bearings and high oil temperature, electric energy in the generators, electric resistance in the transmission wires and light bulbs, air resistance in the fans and blowers and compressors of every AC unit, useful heat in the heaters and induction furnaces, etc.
The urban heat island is real. You see it every weatehr report when the “downtown” temperature is 10 degrees HOTTER than the “suburbs” or “surrounding cities” temperatures.
Above, we were told that the sun puts out 9000 times the ENTIRE human energy production every day. So, the human contribution is real, but only 1/10 of one percent of the solar input. And over a very, very limited area of the whole world.
Well, that’s not good enough for the enviro-extremists.
The question is: Yes, the urban heat island effect is real. BUT, is HANSEN correcting for the actual urban heat island effect in his complex, unknown, unaudited temperature records, or is he (deliberately) covering up the urban heat island effect? Is he USING theurban heatisland effect to CREATE a false impression of global warming using skewed data and false “corrections” to old temperature records?
If thetotal AGW premise is based on 27 years when temperatrues increased by 0.50 degree, is Hansen creating that effect by “only” subtracting 2.45 degrees of a heat island temperature that rose 2.95 degrees in 100 years?
If Hansen and ipcc and the rest would put the thermal waste in their theories I would be happy to hear them out! But they do not include any other data.
Why?
LOL. As a percentage of the total surface area of the planet, dense human populations amount to precious little. If your really think about it, the planet is almost uninhabited.
But darn those kids, leaving the doors open and heating the outdoors.
Once, a long time ago, there was an alarmist article I read, I think in the Scientific American, that the world would go out because of the increase in entropy, for which there is nothing one can do.
Fortunately there was no audience for that.
Extra heat from humans might destroy habitats but there is no reason to think that the heat sinks check at labels. It might come in handy in case of a LIA.
I wonder if any research has been done to quantify how much UHI is caused by the physical structures and how much is due to energy consumption. Even heat from sewerage heats the surface a little. Also we produce a lot of water vapor which might have a local effect. Perhaps if a survey were done on the abandoned urban areas around Chernobyl we could see a UHI without energy use.
OT Here is a discussion from the BBC which is so far outside my way of thinking that it makes my head spin.
“How responsible is it to have children in a world whose environmental health is already under stress?”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7759845.stm
David B. (16:21:52) :”We can see the con-trails, but planes cruising at altitude can hardly be considered part of the “Urban Heat Island”.
I wonder how relevant all this extra heat would be, if we compared it to the effect of greenhouse gases?”
Reply: here is an interesting article on the subject:
“NASA scientists have found that cirrus clouds, formed by contrails from aircraft engine exhaust, are capable of increasing average surface temperatures enough to account for a warming trend in the United States that occurred between 1975 and 1994.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/04/040428061056.htm
and
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/020808075457.htm
I wonder what the thermal images ( one from above, one from below) of contrails in various weather and times looks like?
“ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2008) — The sun’s magnetic field may have a significant impact on weather and climatic parameters in Australia and other countries in the northern and southern hemispheres. According to a study in Geographical Research, the droughts are related to the solar magnetic phases and not the greenhouse effect.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081202081449.htm
I knew this one was coming. We had to find some way to keep nuclear down and with the obvious failings of the carbon dioxide models we needed another weapon against fossil fuels. Nice going! We can now add this to our arsenal against humanity.
I’d love to have my own personal heat sequestration unit to tap into on this colder than normal December morning. I’ll take a 20 million btu unit, please
Richard Hegarty (03:01:16) : “ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2008) — The sun’s magnetic field may…
This is the story I posted yesterday in WUWT? in the hope Leif would pick it up and comment.
Anthony, I suspect if you mesured humidity during your transect, you would get a graph which is the inverse temperature. UHI results primarily from low urban humidity relative to surrounding rural/suburban areas and not waste heat.
Which Leon Brozyna (11:33:41) post gives an example of.
I remember catching the weather on TV when I was living in Atlanta as they showed how thunderstorms would die out as they approached Atlanta’s UHI.
Increased heat, all things being equal, should feed a thunderstorm. The thunderstorms die out due to reduced humidity over the city.
OK. I got a plan! We pump all the waste heat into a space shuttles, sent them into space and open the doors and we could waste trillion of $ doing it. LOL
Richard Hegarty (00:23:38) :
I like to annoy people by commenting that “Having children is the most
polluting thing you can do.” Long after I’m gone, my daughters will
maintaining the carbon footprint I’ve continued from my parents’ time.
You’d think Greenpeace or some such group would invade maternity wards
and spray “Shame on you” on the nursery window or “Gordon Bin It” to
trigger more discussion.
In the 1960s there was some discussion on whether it was moral to bring
children into a world on the brink of nuclear war. I doubt that discussion
had any measurable impact on the birthrate.