One of the most ridiculous claims recently related to Menne et al 2010 and my surfacestations project was a claim made by DeSmogBlog (and Huffington Post who carried the story also) is that the “Urban Heat Island Myth is Dead“.
To clarify for these folks: Elvis is dead, UHI is not.
For disbelievers, let’s look at a few cases showing UHI to be alive and well.
CASE 1: I’ve measured it myself, in the city of Reno for example:
The UHI signature of Reno, NV – Click for larger image
Read the story of how I created this graph here The procedure and raw data is there if you want to check my work.
I chose Reno for two reasons. It was close to me, and it is the centerpiece of a NOAA training manual on how to site weather stations to avoid UHI effects.
CASE 2: NOAA shows their own measurements that mesh well with mine:
To back that up, the NOAA National Weather Service includes the UHI factor in one of it’s training course ( NOAA Professional Competency Unit 6 ) using Reno, NV.
In the PCU6 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. The ASOS USHCN station is right between the runways.
This is NOAA’s graph showing the changes to the official climate record when they made station moves:
Source for 24a and 24b: NOAA Internal Training manual, 2004-2007
Oops, moving the station south caused a cooling. Fixed now, all better.
What is striking about this is that here we have NOAA documenting the effects of an “urban heat bubble” something that DeSmog Blog says ” is dead”, plus we have NOAA documenting a USHCN site with known issues, held up as a bad example for training the operational folks, being used in a case study for the new USHCN2 system.
So if NOAA trains for UHI placement, I’m comfortable in saying that DesmogBlog claims of UHI being “dead” are pure rubbish. But let’s not stop there.
CASE 3: From an embattled scientist.
A paper in JGR that slipped in 2007 without much notice (but known now thanks to Warwick Hughes) is one from Phil Jones, the “former” director of the Hadley Climate Center in the UK. The paper is titled: Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China
In it, Jones identifies an urban warming signal in China of 0.1 degrees C per decade. Or, if you prefer, 1 degree C per century. Not negligible by any means. Here is the abstract:
Global surface temperature trends, based on land and marine data, show warming of about 0.8°C over the last 100 years. This rate of warming is sometimes questioned because of the existence of well-known Urban Heat Islands (UHIs). We show examples of the UHIs at London and Vienna, where city center sites are warmer than surrounding rural locations. Both of these UHIs however do not contribute to warming trends over the 20th century because the influences of the cities on surface temperatures have not changed over this time. In the main part of the paper, for China, we compare a new homogenized station data set with gridded temperature products and attempt to assess possible urban influences using sea surface temperature (SST) data sets for the area east of the Chinese mainland. We show that all the land-based data sets for China agree exceptionally well and that their residual warming compared to the SST series since 1951 is relatively small compared to the large-scale warming. Urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1°C decade−1 over the period 1951–2004, with true climatic warming accounting for 0.81°C over this period.
Even though Jones tries to minimize the UHI effect elsewhere, saying the UHI trends don’t contribute to warming in London and Vienna, what is notable about the paper is that Jones has been minimizing the UHI issues for years and now does an about face on China.
Jones may have tried to hide CRU data, but he’s right about China.
CASE 4: From “The Dog ate My Data” who writes:
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) blames Melbourne’s equal warmest overnight temperature of 30.6 degrees, on January 12 on the heat island effect. The previous time the city was that hot overnight was February 1, 1902.
The Age newspaper cites a meteorologist at the bureau, Harvey Stern,
Melbourne recorded its equal warmest overnight temperature, 30.6 degrees, on January 12. The previous time the city was that hot overnight was February 1, 1902.
A meteorologist at the bureau, Harvey Stern, said that Melbourne suffered from a heat island effect, in which a city is warmer than the surrounding countryside.
This was the case especially at night, because of heat stored in bricks and concrete and trapped between close-packed buildings.
I am stunned if that is correct firstly because BOM isn’t blaming Global Warming and secondly that the urban heat island effect directly receives the blame. With faults in the 2007 IPCC’s AR4 now pouring out I guess it is not suprising that attributions of weather events are now, shall we say, possibly becoming more circumspect.
CASE 5: Heatzilla stomps Tokyo
From the website “science of doom” who writes:
New Research from Japan
Detection of urban warming in recent temperature trends in Japan by Fumiaki Fujibe was published in the International Journal of Climatology (2009). It is a very interesting paper which I’ll comment on in this post.
The abstract reads:
The contribution of urban effects on recent temperature trends in Japan was analysed using data at 561 stations for 27 years (March 1979–February 2006). Stations were categorized according to the population density of surrounding few kilometres. There is a warming trend of 0.3–0.4 °C/decade even for stations with low population density (<100 people per square kilometre), indicating that the recent temperature increase is largely contributed by background climatic change. On the other hand, anomalous warming trend is detected for stations with larger population density. Even for only weakly populated sites with population density of 100–300/km2, there is an anomalous trend of 0.03–0.05 °C/decade. This fact suggests that urban warming is detectable not only at large cities but also at slightly urbanized sites in Japan. Copyright, 2008 Royal Meteorological Society.
Why the last 27 years?
The author first compares the temperature over 100 years as measured in Tokyo in the central business district with that in Hachijo Island, 300km south.
Tokyo – 3.1°C rise over 100 years (1906-2006)
Hachijo Island – 0.6°C over the same period
This certainly indicates a problem, but to do a thorough study over the last 100 years is impossible because most temperature stations with a long history are in urban areas.
However, at the end of the 1970’s, the Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System (AMeDAS) was deployed around Japan providing hourly temperature data at 800 stations. The temperature data from these are the basis for the paper. The 27 years coincides with the large temperature rise (see above) of around 0.3-0.4°C globally.
And the IPCC (2007) summarized the northern hemisphere land-based temperature measurements from 1979- 2005 as 0.3°C per decade.
How was Urbanization measured?
The degree of urbanization around each site was calculated from grid data of population and land use, because city populations often used as an index of urban size (Oke, 1973; Karl et al., 1988; Fujibe, 1995) might not be representative of the thermal environment of a site located outside the central area of a city.
What were the Results?
Mean temperature anomaly vs population density, Japan
The x-axis, D3, is a measure of population density. T’mean is the change in the mean temperature per decade.
Tmean is the average of all of the hourly temperature measurements, it is not the average of Tmax and Tmin.
Notice the large scatter – this shows why having a large sample is necessary. However, in spite of that, there is a clear trend which demonstrates the UHI effect.
There is large scatter among stations, indicating the dominance of local factors’ characteristic to each station. Nevertheless, there is a positive correlation of 0.455 (Tmean = 0.071 logD3 + 0.262 °C), which is significant at the 1% level, between logD3 and Tmean.
Here’s the data summarized with T’mean as well as the T’max and T’min values. Note that D3 is population per km2 around the point of temperature measurement, and remember that the temperature values are changes per decade:
The effect of UHI demonstrated in various population densities
Note that, as observed by many researchers in other regions, especially Roger Pielke Sr, the Tmin values are the most problematic – demonstrating the largest UHI effect. Average temperatures for land-based stations globally are currently calculated from the average of Tmax and Tmin, and in many areas globally it is the Tmin which has shown the largest anomalies. But back to our topic under discussion..
And for those confused about how the Tmean can be lower than the Tmin value in each population category, it is because we are measuring anomalies from decade to decade.
And the graphs showing the temperature anomalies by category (population density):
Dependence of Tmean, Tmax and Tmin on population density for different regions in Japan
Quantifying the UHI value
Now the author carries out an interesting step:
As an index of net urban trend, the departure of T from its average for surrounding non-urban stations was used on the assumption that regional warming was locally uniform.
That is, he calculates the temperature deviation in each station in category 3-6 with the locally relevant category 1 and 2 (rural) stations. (There were not enough category 1 stations to do it with just category 1). The calculation takes into account how far away the “rural” stations are, so that more weight is given to closer stations.
Estimate of actual UHI by referencing the closest rural stations – again categorized by population density
And the relevant table:
Temperature delta from nearby rural areas vs population density
Conclusion
Here’s what the author has to say:
On the one hand, it indicates the presence of warming trend over 0.3 °C/decade in Japan, even at non-urban stations. This fact confirms that recent rapid warming at Japanese cities is largely attributable to background temperature rise on the large scale, rather than the development of urban heat islands.
..However, the analysis has also revealed the presence of significant urban anomaly. The anomalous trend for the category 6, with population density over 3000 km−2 or urban surface coverage over 50%, is about 0.1 °C/decade..
..This value may be small in comparison to the background warming trend in the last few decades, but they can have substantial magnitude when compared with the centennial global trend, which is estimated to be 0.74°C/century for 1906–2005 (IPCC, 2007). It therefore requires careful analysis to avoid urban influences in evaluating long-term temperature changes.
So, in this very thorough study, in Japan at least, the temperature rise that has been measured over the last few decades is a solid result. The temperature increase from 1979 – 2006 has been around 0.3°C/decade
However, in the larger cities the actual measurement will be overstated by 25%.
And in a time of lower temperature rise, the UHI may be swamping the real signal.
The degree of urbanization around each site was calculated from grid data of population and land use, because city populations often used as an index of urban size (Oke, 1973; Karl et al., 1988; Fujibe, 1995) might not be representative of the thermal environment of a site located outside the central area of a city.
Case 6: California Counties by population show a distinct UHI signature.
My friend Jim Goodridge, former California State Climatologist identified the statewide UHI signature issues way back in 1996. This graph had a profound effect on me, becuase it was the one that really made an impact on me, switching my views to being skeptical. Yes, I used to be a warmer, but that’s another story.
Goodridge, J.D. (1996) Comments on “Regional Simulations of Greenhouse Warming including Natural Variability” . Bull, Amer. Meteorological Society 77:1588-1599.
Goodrich (1996) showed the importance of urbanization to temperatures in his study of California counties in 1996. He found for counties with a million or more population the warming from 1910 to 1995 was 4F, for counties with 100,000 to 1 million it was 1F and for counties with less than 100,000 there was no change (0.1F).
He’s been quietly toiling away in his retirement on his computer for the last 15 years or so making all sort of data comparisons. One plot which he shared with me in 2003 is a 104 year plot map of California showing station trends after painstakingly hand entering data into an Excel spreadsheet and plotting slopes of the data to produce trend dots.
He used every good continuous piece of data he could get his hands on, no adjusted data like the climate modelers use, only raw from Cooperative Observing Stations, CDF stations, Weather Service Office’s and Municipal stations.
The results are quite interesting. Here it is:
I’ll have more interesting revelations from Jim Goodridge soon.
Case 7: NASA JPL’s climatologist says UHI is an issue
This press release from NASA Jet Propulsion Lab says that most of the increase in temperature has to do with ubanization:
[NASA’s JPL Bill] Patzert says global warming due to increasing greenhouse gases is responsible for some of the overall heating observed in Los Angeles and the rest of California. Most of the increase in heat days and length of heat waves, however, is due to a phenomenon called the “urban heat island effect.”
Heat island-induced heat waves are a growing concern for urban and suburban dwellers worldwide. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, studies around the world have shown that this effect makes urban areas from 2 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 6 degrees Celsius) warmer than their surrounding rural areas.
Patzert says this effect is steadily warming Southern California, though more modestly than some larger urban areas around the world. “Dramatic urbanization has resulted in an extreme makeover for Southern California, with more homes, lawns, shopping centers, traffic, freeways and agriculture, all absorbing and retaining solar radiation, making our megalopolis warmer,” Patzert said.
CASE 8: You can see it from space. NASA (not the GISS division) measures it. Here’s a report they presented at the last AGU meeting in December 2009. Gee, that curve below looks like Reno, NV, doesn’t it?
The urban heat island effect can raise temperatures within cities as much as 5 C higher than the surrounding countryside. New data suggests that the effect is more or less pronounced depending on the type of landscape — forest or desert — the city replaced. Credit: NASA
NASA researchers studying urban landscapes have found that the intensity of the “heat island” created by a city depends on the ecosystem it replaced and on the regional climate. Urban areas developed in arid and semi-arid regions show far less heating compared with the surrounding countryside than cities built amid forested and temperate climates.
“The placement and structure of cities — and what was there before — really does matter,” said Marc Imhoff, biologist and remote sensing specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “The amount of the heat differential between the city and the surrounding environment depends on how much of the ground is covered by trees and vegetation. Understanding urban heating will be important for building new cities and retrofitting existing ones.”
Goddard researchers including Imhoff, Lahouari Bounoua, Ping Zhang, and Robert Wolfe presented their findings on Dec. 16 in San Francisco at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Satellite imagery of suburban (top) and urban Atlanta shows the differences in daytime heating, as caused by the urban heat island effect. Credit: NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio
Yep, UHI is alive and well. Anybody with an automobile dashboard thermometer who drives a commute from country to city can easily measure UHI, and you don’t have to be a climate scientist to prove it to yourself.
UPDATE: For a primer on how UHI is not dealt with by NOAA and CRU, have a look at this Climate Audit post:
Realclimate and Disinformation on UHI
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Downtown Denver is currently 9-16 degrees warmer than outlying areas of equal elevation.
http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap/?zip=80002&magic=3&wmo=99999
If a city has had a stable population, land use extent, and energy use over the years then the fact that it is warmer than rural shouldn’t effect the RATE of increase in temperature.
The Japanese and California studies, it seems to me, are primarily quantifing the rate of temperature increase due to energy use patterns and to some extent miss the possible effects of growing populations and city extent, which I would think would be more dominant factors. Both large/high density and small/low density city groups would have had some high and low growth sites in the groups. Though one might think that the high density/large city groups had on average more growth over time than smaller cities. This might explain why the graphs had such poor r values. ie. I think the studies are using size/density as a proxie for city extent/population growth rate and they are not especially good proxies.
I would like to see a study that compared the rate of temperature increase for growing cities, both population and extent versus stable cities versus rural sites.
I would bet that a much stronger correlation would turn up.
Or how about a multivarate regression using population, land use extent, automobile usage, and time versus temperature for cities.
Oh come now, Elvis isn’t dead, he’s alive and well and living on Mars 🙂
John Gme
Something that bugs me about UHI is that is shows up as increased nightime temps. I see it in a town of 3,500.
The part that gets me is that the light domes seem to coincide with the heat domes, at rough glance. Any chance some of the UHI is due to light intensity trapping Longwave Radiation?
A station that is heavily urbanized and has suffered a blackout for the night or two would be a test case.
For me I don’t need a scientist to tell me a city is warmer than rural.I would expect any scientist trying to average temperatures over a long period of time would take into account the UHI effect.
Marvin
You have just proven my opinion which is,no scientist should state anything with certainty.
They should just say,my research shows blah blah blah,but bear in mind that my research is based on factors that I have allowed for,but there could be a heap of factors I didn’t allow for.
As a member of the unwashed masses,I don’t want to know what some scientists who may have missed a whole heap of factors,tell me what the future is in 50 years.I would rather them be concentrating on real issues,such as figuring out how to predict earthquakes.I would be happy to see real money thrown at that problem,I am not happy to see money thrown at a problem invented by science.
I accepted what the scientists said about AGW,I had a quiet laugh about the thought of the nations of the world being in complete agreement and saying”better think of our people in 50 years”I knew there would never be universal agreement.
It didn’t bother me because if it is going to happen, then it will.
But then I found out just exactly what was being asked of my children,and future generations to try and fix a problem (that may exist)when there was no hope of fixing that problem.
Why didn’t the IPPC simply say
We may have a problem.
We cannot impede progress(that leads to a bigger problem)
Let’s set up a fund,funding science,not a big amount
Let’s set up a war chest.
Let’s invest that money with the world bank(who has control of said money)
Let’s deal with each problem as they arise.
let’s use that money to make sure that when corrupt governments accept payment from other countries allowing them to mine their resources,that the mining is done as cleanly as possible.
There is so much good the UN could do,but it is swamped by the hysteria over AGW.
Nobody is forcing the UN to do good,the leaders are too busy trying to use AGW as an extra tax grab.
There is no doubt in my mind that the UN has become corrupt,and is a colossal failure,yet my government wants me to keep on contributing to that failure.
4 billion (18:52:46) :
If UHI is influential, why does land based temperature data show close agreement with Satellite data?
Because the “Team” couldn’t adjust the Satellite data.
Well, Susan Solomon is still a Warmist, though she may be moving gradually towards Luke Warmist:
“She [Solomon] would not comment on the mistake in the IPCC report — which was published in a separate section on likely impacts — or on calls for Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, to step down.”
Sounds like a loyal true believer, still gargling the Kool-Aid?
“What I will say, is that this [new study] shows there are climate scientists round the world who are trying very hard to understand and to explain to people openly and honestly what has happened over the last decade.”
Do, or do not. There is no try.
Doug in Seattle (20:09:16) : :”I agree with Mervin that R=.455 is pretty sketchy for drawing any substantial conclusions. The plot doesn’t look to be much more than a cloud of points…”
Doug, this is climate science, where a dildoclimatology sample size of a dozen +/- is considered to give significant results, but not to be so significant that they have to include the sample size itself in the article. It’s like ancient astrology–they’re lucky to get the decimal place right. R = 0.455 is fairly strong, considering the field.
Those guys can’t still figure out what a 6th grader can figure out ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=6th+grader )… UHI is real and anyone with the smallest sense of observation can feel it on any sunny day.
In a way this is good. Before they were ignoring the counter arguments to AGW now we have an apparent discussion/argument going on… still aggressive though but I guess old habits die hard.
I live in Reno and have a cheapo weather station setup in the backyard. The sensor is sited such that it actually gives a good relative reading, and I’ve calibrated it.
What is so amusing is the evening weather report, where I’m seeing temps on the news that are typically 5-7 degrees warmer than mine for the “current” evening reading at 6-7 pm.
When I first drove a car with a built in thermometer through Carson City, I noticed a sharp 2-3 degree increase in temp while driving through town, then it went back down. Going both directions, winter and summer, regardless of time of day.
The UHI effect is similar to the photochemical smog effect. The smog happens in densely car populated areas (city downtowns) and almost none existing outside cities. In fact, UHI and photochemical smog are related.
I’m a little confused…
The end of Jones’ abstract says “Urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1°C decade−1 over the period 1951–2004, with true climatic warming accounting for 0.81°C over this period.”
So the period was 53 years, which meant the “Urban-related warming” attributed .5C of that .81C or was it in addition to the “true climatic warming making a total of 1.3C for that period?
Apparently it is controversial when the author that no less than “Nature” has annointed as “brilliantly” debunking all those nasty climate denialists says it obviously doesn’t exist and is just part of the conspiracy.
Oh, and Leo DiCaprio says he’s just swell too, so surely he must be right about UHI.
/end deadpan
See:
http://www.cnrm.meteo.fr/gmme/Pages_perso/page_perso_masson_oct2009.html
Note the photograph (ROFL) and the discussion of Urabn Climate and Climate Change.
A little OT but I was checking over at RC where they were discussing the Glaciergate when I ran across this comment with Gavin’s reply
Not only is the IPCC fallible, but NASA is as well, and even more so.
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Had almost the same error, just a little worse.
“Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres, and may disappear altogether in certain regions of our planet, such as the Himalayas, by 2030″
Note the 2030 figure, not the 2035 figure. I assume NASA must have used another source.
The comment has been silently vanished today, but you can still read it in the Google cache.
If there are any NASA employees here, can they perhaps comment on why NASA published an incorrect statement, and then silently removed it without any comment on their error – unlike the IPCC.
Will NASA take some steps to remedy the false information that has been read by many of their web viewers? Perhaps by a statement, or even a link on the offending web page pointing out their previous error?
[Response: That’s a joke right? They fix an error, and now you want them to track down and apologise to everyone who may have read it? If something is wrong, it gets fixed. You should be happy. – gavin]
I think Ill submit this to Wiki as a definition of “hubris”
Is DeSmogBlog saying that there is no UHI or that its impact is negligible? Either way I will put my life on the fact that there is a significant temperature difference (3-7C) (or more) especially at night between where I live now, close to the city centre, and used to live 10km away, in suburbia. The airport where the local weather data is gathered is about 2km from my present and definitely part of my local UHI. I can supply relevant details – city, country, population, terrain, if necessary. The climate of the area is Southern Hemisphere coastal temperate. (never seen snow or ice – yet)
Any chance someone could fix the style sheet at Steve McIntyre’s site? The old one printed beautifully but the new wordpress one is hopeless in Firefox and IE8. I’m trying to increase my carbon footprint and prefer to read from dead trees!
UHI is an effect noted since Roman Times and was the reason
many notables escaped the city during the summer. Mitigating the effect was why Nero was asked to ‘build streets narrow and buildings high’ following the great fire, where he allegedly fiddled whilst Rome burnt.
Undoubtedly UHI is real and undoubtedly it is understated in the IPCC figures.
In some cities-particularly cooler Northern latitude ones-it is likely to be a benefit in keeping the local environment warmer than it would otherwise be . In some naturally warmer cities the additional heat created by man may need mitigation.
However, what I wanted to ask relates to this post;
“stumpy (18:56:26) :
You only have to look at the night sky with a infra red “heat” camera to see the “bubble” of heat radiating from towns in the distance, you cant refute hard evidence like this with stupid statistics or models, I have seen it with my own eyes on a clear night as will have any amercian abrams tank commander driving around in Iraq who uses the technology to see bodies hiding in the dark. Check out some of the abrams infrared night sight tank footage and you can see it yourself!”
It beggars the question as to what effect UHI has at different heights where data may be compiled. For example, in crude terms, buildings leak heat from their roofs, whilst tarmac reflects heat stored from the day at ground level.
What is the temperature profle of the UHI effect from the tarmac level itself, to the height of the standard measurement for weather stations, a car thermometer (typically higher than from a land station) plus from the height that satellites measure at.
Most specifically, how far into the atmosphere would those ‘bubbles’ of heat rise before they become absorbed into the surrounding air or will they become ‘trapped?’
Tonyb
Speaking of UHI…this just in from my RSS:
http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2010/02/breaking-news-niwa-reveals-nz-original-climate-data-missing.html
@Bob Buchanan (19:31:20) :
“OK …. so urban areas, which are created by people, are getting warmer. If we average the UHI temps with the non-UHI temps we are warmer than if we had no urban areas. We really do have anthropogenic global warming; just not caused by greenhouse gases.”
What percentage of the total of earth’s surface area is inhabited by humans? My understanding is it’s about 3%. In terms of man affecting the other 97%, it’s the tail wagging the dog, in my view. Man is perhaps causing a few 1/100 of a degree warming globally, but no more.
A better question to ask is what percentage of the total global temperature monitoring stations are located close enough to this 3% area to be affected by man’s activities, i.e. release of heat? (I’m not referring to greenhouse gases here)
“We show examples of the UHIs at London and Vienna, where city center sites are warmer than surrounding rural locations. Both of these UHIs however do not contribute to warming trends over the 20th century because the influences of the cities on surface temperatures have not changed over this time.”
I don’t have the data but I suspect that if you look at the growth in the number of vehicles and the increase in electricity consumption over the 20th century in London, then all of that heat generated has to go somewhere. The cars will warm the tarmac, especially as they now crawl along and all the growth in electrical appliances will be massive. For example environmentalists moan about the growth of energy wasteful 4x4s in London, so how can he say there is no change over time, surely that statement shoots destroys his credibility.
4 billion (18:52:46) :
If UHI is influential, why does land based temperature data show close agreement with Satellite data?
Because SST record, covering bigger part of the Earth dilutes UHI affected ground thermometers.
MSU vs CRU global, 1979-2003: CRU rising 36% steeper
MSU vs CRU land only, 1979-2003: CRU rising 69% steeper
” 4 billion (18:52:46) :
If UHI is influential, why does land based temperature data show close agreement with Satellite data?
”
It doesn’t, that is why GISS and Had/Cru show much more warming over the past 30 years than does UAH (satellite). GISS and HAd /cru have a warm bias due to increased urbanisation over 30 years pushing up the temps at many of their urban ground based weather stations. UAH does not show this, check recent articles from this site about the divergence of GISS (land) from UAH (satellite).
This is coming from the other end of the scale of academic depth and accuracy, ie a lay observer, but here goes. I’ve noticed on more than one occasion, but particularly in this recent cold spell, that the in-car temperature gauge very often shows an increase of 0.5 degrees (its accuracy limit) when I leave a main road and join a busy motorway (in northern England), suggesting a “strip heating” effect of the motorway traffic.
I also remember that, in the bad old days of lower quality diesel engines, if travelling on a long, straight stretch of motorway on a warm, still day, you could see a dark column of dirty air directly over, and for the full width of the motorway.
Just thought I’d mention it.