They join the UK Met office in embracing UHI now. Of course, my friend Jim Goodridge, former California State Climatologist, had this nailed in 1996 with his study of surface temperature in California:
MEDIA RELEASE Wednesday 13 October 2010
Hot cities
If you thought our cities are getting warmer, you’re right.
“We can now confidently say that the reason our cities are warmer and warming faster than the surrounding countryside during the day is because of the urbanisation…”
Bureau of Meteorology researchers have found that daytime temperatures in our cities are warming more rapidly than those of the surrounding countryside and that this is due to the cities themselves.
Bureau climate scientist, Belinda Campbell, said “we’ve known for a while that city night time temperatures have been warmer because the heat’s retained after sunset just that much longer than the countryside, and that city daytime temperatures have been warming too.”
“But what we didn’t know was whether city day time temperatures were also warmer because of the urbanisation or whether it was due to the overall warming of the planet associated with the enhanced greenhouse effect.”
“We can now confidently say that the reason our cities are warmer and warming faster than the surrounding countryside during the day is because of the urbanisation, the fact that all those offices, houses and factories absorb the heat and retain it a little bit longer,” Ms Campbell said.
On average, the enhanced greenhouse effect is responsible for about 0.5 to 1.0 degree of observed warming around the globe (more in some areas, less in other areas).
The additional effect of urbanisation on warming varies from city to city (depending on the buildings and open parkland close to the observation site).
The research team analysed data from 70 sites in the Bureau’s meteorological data archive in order to quantify how much the increases in daytime temperature can be attributed to urbanisation and how much to the enhanced greenhouse effect.
The sites were mostly from towns with populations ranging from 500 to 100,000, with a handful being either in cities with more than 100,000, or in isolated locations with hardly anybody for hundreds of kilometres.
Ms Campbell is presenting the results of the team’s work at the Australia – New Zealand Climate Forum in Hobart on Thursday (14 October, 2010).
For media inquiries
(03) 9669 4057
Mobile 0439 452 424
Source: http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/20101013.shtml
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h/t to WUWT reader “gibo”
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Also, see this work I did in Reno, NV measuring and proving the UHI effect to myself:
…and if you’d like to measure UHI yourself:
Measure UHI in your town with this easy to use temperature datalogger kit
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Mike …
find me a urban GISS station that has UHI adjustments … have fun becasue you won’t find too many … most often you will find negative adjustments in the older years decreasing to zero for recent measurements …
So tell us again that “The UHI effect is well known and has been taken into account by climatologists. ” We need a good laugh …
This last truly makes no sense. In non-climate discussion “overall” would mean “pretty much everywhere.” And that would mean even out in rural areas. So if it is overall, rural areas should be seeing warming.
And then somehow she is saying that the UHI might be “due to the overall warming” feeding back into the cities. FROM the rural areas?
A warming or cooling effect must go from the more intense to the less intense, not the other way around.
This part is even more insane. We all generally accept a 0.7C warming since 1900. And she says 0.5 or 1.0 of that is UHI. It doesn’t leave much for CO2 to do, does it?
RichieP says: “We’ll only know they are embracing real science when they make sure the politicals are also aware and take account of the uncertainties and alternative viewpoints…”
The politicals already know. This hoax serves their ends and they’ll happily spend your last dollar/pound/quatloo on propaganda to keep their simple acolytes in line.
Obviously there are too many researchers that have spent their entire lives having never left the city. Around here some people live and work in the city, others live in the country or in surrounding smaller towns and drive to the city to work. These people have for decades known that it is warmer in the city and cooler in the country. So common sense and casual observation figured out long ago what science and dedicated research was just discovered.
After I do the math, the only conclusion I see is that the earth is actually COOLING!
“But what we didn’t know was whether city day time temperatures were also warmer because of the urbanisation or whether it was due to the overall warming of the planet associated with the enhanced greenhouse effect.”
This is HUGE… don’t you all see? They have discovered yet another devastating property of C02…that it reflects heat ONLY back to cities! This proves it. How else would a city warm up more than a rural area due to the greenhouse effect?
Amazing research. I almost feel unworthy.
Almost.
JimB
Wow, common knowledge backed up by scientific research. This pretty much sums up most real research (a very small percentage of all research) – which simply verifies what we already know. The rest is either wrong, poorly done and wrong, or fraudulent and criminal (which constitutes almost all AGW research), with a small percentage, probably about .005% of pure research.
Anthony, Assuming that the 0.5 to 1.0 deg C range for UHI effect quoted is of the right order of magnitude and that this could be extrapolated for all towns and cities where climate weather stations are employed, what sort of impact would this have on world-wide land temperature anomolies? Aye, Bob.
Has anyone called Phil Jones for his response or comment?
But what we didn’t know was whether city day time temperatures were also warmer because of the urbanisation or whether it was due to the overall warming of the planet associated with the enhanced greenhouse effect.
Oh, Lord. I have looked at USHCN1 raw trends for the last 100 years and USHCN2 raw trends for the last 30 years. I separated out urban suburban and rural trends (using NASA designations).
For the 1979 – 1998 warming period, urban warmed faster than suburban warmed over a third faster than rural, with suburban right between the two. During the cooling period since 1998, urban ares cooled slower than subrban which cooled slower than rural.
So during both warming and cooling periods, the trend for cities was warmest, followed by suburban, with rural trends being coolest.
You’d think these highly paid climatologists might have done the same sort of fifth-grader excel efforts by now. Or maybe they just didn’t want to know the bottom line.
If this is so (and no sensible person would doubt it), please explain why homogenisation adjustments post 1970 are invariably (if not always) upwards rather than downwards. When will they revist/explain those adjustments?
I guess there is very little difference between a city and a desert.
The “observed” warming…is that before or after adjustments?
Could someone get ABC into the glossary as in:
Shocker! ABC says UHI making cities hotter!
thanks
Mike
“But what we didn’t know was whether city day time temperatures were also warmer because of the urbanisation or whether it was due to the overall warming of the planet associated with the enhanced greenhouse effect.”
Read that as failure of the climate modelers to step out of the office. An hour’s trip with a few pit stops removes all doubt.
Most modern cars have temperature readouts built into the dash, which means that the majority of drivers potentially know the answer to that question.
It seems that you and many others have misunderstood the press release. The 0.5 to 1.0 deg C is for the general greenhouse gas AGW.
The size of the UHI effect was not mentioned in the press release.
In other words, they press release did NOT claim that UHI was 0.5 to 1.0C.
Richard111 says:
October 14, 2010 at 9:51 am
I guess there is very little difference between a city and a desert.
Rocks are rocks, natural or manmade, where heating is concerned.
This had been known since the Romans invented concrete and put it to widespread use.
So, can we say that the MSM took a detour into the Dark Ages of reporting?
…”We’ve known for a while”…Dear young lady at BoM, the old Romans knew this, but
crazy Nero didn’t think it was enough, so he set Rome, the city, on fire…Or did I miss
something?? Btw, an assessment made by 2 Swedish researchers in Luleå, says that as
as much as half of the observed GW can be explained by human energy use…so stay in
your pyjamases if you want to save the world [see recent BBC-thread…]
Business as usual. AGW scientists take credit for work done years ago by the surfacestations project of WUWT, the Pielkes, and others – oh dear, without accreditation-this will give Raymond Bradley another plagiarism fit on top of the Wegman one although he may be too exhausted to take up this cause .
The jig is now apparently up, so if you have to accept UHI’s considerable effect on the official record, you might just as well arrogantly make it your new scientific discovery. One of two things will come out of this: a) they will make a bit of an adjustment but not enough to bend the trend too much below the CO2 trend or b) this will lead to their scientific discovery that we are going into a cooling period – I’m betting on both.
The research team analysed data from 70 sites in the Bureau’s meteorological data archive in order to quantify how much the increases in daytime temperature can be attributed to urbanisation and how much to the enhanced greenhouse effect.
The sites were mostly from towns with populations ranging from 500 to 100,000, with a handful being either in cities with more than 100,000, or in isolated locations with hardly anybody for hundreds of kilometres.
And where are the weather stations situated I wonder.
“It seems that you and many others have misunderstood the press release. The 0.5 to 1.0 deg C is for the general greenhouse gas AGW.
The size of the UHI effect was not mentioned in the press release.”
I agree with Charlie A. If you parse this closely they’re not admitting to any specific figure. “Enhanced” is very much a weasel word.
I cannot understand the total lack of ignorance to the obvious. Cities and their surrounding urbanized areas are tremendous users of energy, not only do these entities absorb solar radiation in their biuldings pavement etc, it requires tremendous inputs of energy from the surrounding environment just to function. Large metropolis’ cannot provide itself with the required energy inputs on it’s own, given their size and populations, a steady stream of resources from outside is vital. Heating, cooling, transportation, food inputs, and maintenance in all aspects can be and should be viewed as energy inputs. For example (and by no means is this based on any facts or studies) if a family of four requires the energy output of one acre of land to maintain a developed world lifestyle then to maintain a metropolis of a million people requires a million acres equivalent, of the surrounding environment to sustain it always.
When viewed in this context, it is a no brainer that cities are warmer, on average to rural areas. (third law of thermodynamics) Simply put, all resources equate to energy, concentrate the energy in one area the resultant area is warmer.
Meanwhile BoM are adjusting our rainfall records down – seems we are not getting as much rain as really falls from the skies!
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/why_did_the_bureau_remove_the_rain/
“……on average, the enhanced greenhouse effect is responsible for about 0.5 to 1.0 degree of observed warming around the globe (more in some areas, less in other areas)….”
How can they differentiate, does it come up as a different color on their instruments?
They’re starting from their conclusion and working backwards — laughable.
My feedback to the BOM –
Re: Wednesday 13 October 2010 MEDIA RELEASE Hot cities
<I find it disturbing that we are paying for the ‘research’ by people such as bureau climate scientist Belinda Campbell to investigate climate conditions that your average 5th grader would know. Of course, there is also the mandatory trip to a conference to announce her world-shattering discovery (that has been studied since 1810 – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island)
Many urban temperature monitoring stations are situated in areas close to buildings, vehicular trraffic/parking, artificial surfaces, air conditioners, airports, etc. Can we now expect Ms Campbell to be tasked with studying the effects of, say, Boeing 747 jet exhaust on temperature trends?
I suggest Ms Campbell’s time would be better spent informing us, the tax payers who provide her salary, the specific reasons and adjustments that the BOM place on the raw data from the High Quality Data Sites. A good starting point would be to answer the issues raised at http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/about/.
I recommend kenskingdom to those who have not found it before – a real eye-opener.