From the UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX and overheated climate science department, comes a claim that just doesn’t seem plausible, suggesting that in the future, nearly 11% of a “worst-off city” gross domestic product would be consumed by UHI boosted climate change. On the other hand, the study is by Dr. Richard Tol, who is well respected by the climate skeptic community. He does have a point about “the effects of uncontrolled urban heat islands”
‘Heat island’ effect could double climate change costs for world’s cities
Overheated cities face climate change costs at least twice as big as the rest of the world because of the ‘urban heat island’ effect, new research shows.
The study by an international team of economists of all the world’s major cities is the first to quantify the potentially devastating combined impact of global and local climate change on urban economies.
The analysis of 1,692 cities, published today (Monday 29 May 2017) in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that the total economic costs of climate change for cities this century could be 2.6 times higher when heat island effects are taken into account than when they are not.
For the worst-off city, losses could reach 10.9 per cent of GDP by the end of the century, compared with a global average of 5.6 per cent.
The urban heat island occurs when natural surfaces, such as vegetation and water, are replaced by heat-trapping concrete and asphalt, and is exacerbated by heat from cars, air conditioners and so on. This effect is expected to add a further two degrees to global warming estimates for the most populated cities by 2050.
Higher temperatures damage the economy in a number of ways – more energy is used for cooling, air is more polluted, water quality decreases and workers are less productive, to name a few.
The authors – from the University of Sussex in the UK, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Vrije University Amsterdam – say their new research is significant because so much emphasis is placed on tackling global climate change, while they show that local interventions are as, if not more, important.
Professor Richard S.J. Tol MAE, Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex, said:
“Any hard-won victories over climate change on a global scale could be wiped out by the effects of uncontrolled urban heat islands.
“We show that city-level adaptation strategies to limit local warming have important economic net benefits for almost all cities around the world.”
Although cities cover only around one per cent of the Earth’s surface, they produce about 80 per cent of Gross World Product, consume about 78 per cent of the world’s energy and are home to over half of the world’s population.
Measures that could limit the high economic and health costs of rising urban temperatures are therefore a major priority for policy makers.
The research team carried out a cost-benefit analysis of different local policies for combating the urban heat island, such as cool pavements – designed to reflect more sunlight and absorb less heat – cool and green roofs and expanding vegetation in cities.
The cheapest measure, according to this modelling, is a moderate-scale installation of cool pavements and roofs. Changing 20 per cent of a city’s roofs and half of its pavements to ‘cool’ forms could save up to 12 times what they cost to install and maintain, and reduce air temperatures by about 0.8 degrees.
Doing this on a larger scale would produce even bigger benefits but the vastly increased costs mean that the cost-benefit ratio is smaller.
The research has important implications for future climate policy decisions – the positive impacts of such local interventions are amplified when global efforts are also having an effect, the study shows. Professor Tol said: “It is clear that we have until now underestimated the dramatic impact that local policies could make in reducing urban warming.
“However, this doesn’t have to be an either/or scenario.
“In fact, the largest benefits for reducing the impacts of climate change are attained when both global and local measures are implemented together.
“And even when global efforts fail, we show that local policies can still have a positive impact, making them at least a useful insurance for bad climate outcomes on the international stage.”
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The study: https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3301.html
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Just think how poor Singapore must be. It’s on the equator.
As with all alarmist “studies”, they completely ignore benefits of warming. Cities with increased UHI will require less heating in Winter, and less snow/ice removal.
Another crap study hits the wall.
The average may be global, but the effect is local. Learn to live with your choices and take the good with the bad.
So now lefty has a problem. The desire to concentrate the population into slums errrrr I mean cities and catastrophic heat island effect by doing so. Just more proof we have to kill off a bunch of humans in order to save Gaia.
Man made Climate Change pushes man made urban sprawl, it is a well known fact right? (sarc)
I thought that we had been assured that UHI was not real and had no effect. If this paper is true, maybe we need to revisit the impact of UHI on the terrestrial temperature records.
They are two different things; you have the temperature records, which UHI most certainly does affect, and the overall effect on global temperatures, which may be real, but are too small to measure.
Which came first the chicken or the egg?
Egg.
Who laid it?
something that was not quite a chicken, but was very close.
Good Question,
We can model it, but only by using spherical chickens…
“Although cities cover only around one per cent of the Earth’s surface, they produce about 80 per cent of Gross World Product, consume about 78 per cent of the world’s energy and are home to over half of the world’s population.”
Ah Ha! At least now they have identified the real cause of the supposed “global” warming. As such the solution is also very real. Do away with cities. Probably good to start with Detroit and Baltimore.
What a great potential tool for the control freaks that go by the title “Planner”. UHI mitigation regulations could be implemented (if politicians allow or encourage) that would make all other subjective regs pale in comparison … wetland, natural resources preservation, storm water, tree preservation (does anybody reading this have a tree on their property that they don’t really own?), building aesthetics would just be minor bumps in the road in comparison to the UHI mitigation.
The National Marine Fisheries zealots require that, for their review/approval, pre and post development comparisons of stormwater (volume and/or intensity) runoff mitigation is to be based on “lewis and clark times” for the pre-development impact. Using a similar standard for UHI mitigation would allow regulators unlimited power over areas that were covered with trees.
A whole new industry could be created (like the wetland industry that has grown up over the last 30 years), and the climate seance experts could move laterally into regulatory enforcement, of they could move into private practice and work for developers. Everybody is happy … except for those that think they own land.
Perhaps we don’t have to do with away with cities but just insist that everyone who lives and works in them paint themselves white to reflect sunlight back into space. We could do the roofs and roads too. Great for the sunglasses and sunscreen industries too – so always an upside if you look hard enough.
But just think about the medical bills for treating snow blindness!
Am I missing something or even misinterpreting something? What has UHI got to do with CO2 levels. In line with Warmists’ theories and religion, any such increased local urban Climate Change must be due to higher concentrations of CO2 in urban areas? Is this true! Alternatively this is simply confirmation that the vast majority of any global average temperature rise is due to waste heat emissions and not CO2 emissions! Such emissions occur with all electrical appliances, all engine and boiler operations and exhausts, all other heating systems, all air conditioning system outlets, all manufacturing processes etc. etc. If the latter should we not be prohibiting all these heat generation sources and, presumedly, go back to living in caves, and eating raw food?
no, don’t prohibit them … just manage them and take a small fee (from all) for the management effort and the benefit of all of us. The heat generating fee (after administration expense, of course) is used for mitigation purposes, research, education, and subsidies for non-heat alternatives (like sweaters, hand looms, & llamas).
We need a (U)HI cap and trade & tax & global agreement regulating such.
” … higher concentrations of CO2 in urban areas? Is this true! ” I have done some comparative measurements between diurnal CO2 measurements at my place (close to the shoreline) and the nearest urban centre (in a similar location to the shore line but with far more large buildings and a rising slope). If the obvious places are avoided, eg proximity to vehicular traffic and large a/c vents, there is not a lot of difference. (CO2 makes no difference anyway.) The heat from solar exposed paving and walls will slam into you, but the heat will also produce increased updraft, pulling in a bit of relief in the form of cooler air from the estuary. People get used to this and scuttle through the hot-spots like their counterparts in cold countries react to cold-spots.
The problem with this study is the usual one; people sitting around in temperate climates are not the best people to assess UHI.
Again, conclusory statements about productivity that could be easily checked with latitudinal studies. Any UHI effect should also be visible in cities that are already starting with different climates. A 2 degree UHI effect should be indistinguishable from a 2 degree difference due to the cities’ respective latitudes.
This paper alleges that “Higher temperatures damage the economy in a number of ways – more energy is used for cooling, air is more polluted, water quality decreases and workers are less productive, to name a few.” I’ll give them the first one. Yes, cities in the South tend to use more energy for cooling. And to the extent that the increased energy consumption leads to incremental pollution, you may see some addition damages. Evidence (beyond that marginal impact) about air pollution, water quality and worker productivity across latitudes, on the other hand, are pretty much non-existent. Cities in the North and in the South struggle with the same issues.
Finally, businesses are not stupid. If they thought they could get a 12x payback on facilities costs just by repainting the roof, they’d do it in a skinny minute. That would be “free money”. No sales commissions to pay, no new equipment, no risk. It should be an easy sell to any business operating on low margins. The fact that so few businesses have taken any such steps argues rather strongly that the business case for resurfacing is a lot weaker than the author believes.
No doubt that the urban heat island effect is in play in downtown Los Angeles. Curious, following a piece in the LAT’s on the subject of cooling LA as presented here (but seemingly shrilling that the main culprit was climate change (I suspect they mean man-made) and their presentation of how many more days of extreme heat during the summer months would be experienced by certain future time frames, I took a look at the standing records for Los Angeles – for June – August. Interestingly, 25 of the high temperature records still standing are from the late 1800’s – that’s out of 92 days – 27% of them. Records have been kept since 1877, so those 25 days of records, only represent 18% of years in the record. Still standing strong.
More to my point. There would have been no urban heat island effect in the 1800’s in downtown Los Angeles; so in order to tie those records today, with easily 4-6 F on the table because of the effect during our summer months here, would not the measured temps today have to come in 4-6 degrees warmer than the established records?
For example, to break the record of 106, set on Aug 19, 1885, would not we’d have to hit, say 110-112, just to tie it? And, another one to break it. That 106 is still the record high for the entire month of August, BTW.
Should not the temps be adjusted to accommodate what is given as a scientific understanding, even by the EPA?
So why have Phoenix, AZ and Las Vegas, NV been some of the fastest growing cities in the past few decades if a hot climate is so poor for productivity and so bad for a city’s economy? Maybe someone will wade through the actual study and see what kinds of things may have been overlooked.
Thanks, Anthony, for highlighting our work.
The Urban Heat Island effect is not controversial.
It is removed from the temperature record when analysing the global climate. It is also omitted from projections of future warming.
However, slightly over half of all people live in cities and well over half of all money is earned there.
Impacts in cities are driven by the sum of global and urban climate change — or rather, there are synergies between the two. Whether you believe that the world will warm because of greenhouse gas emissions or not, the urban heat island effect still has impacts.
There is twist: City leaders can do little about greenhouse gas emissions, as things such as energy taxes are set by national authorities. Mayors around the world are getting all worked up about climate change. If they are serious, the urban heat island effect is actually within their control.
“There is a twist….”
Absolutely, see above at 10:30 a.m..
… a whole new (replacement) area of study. And a whole new regulatory industry.
I recall Tol and Mosher a few years ago exchanging mutual admiration posts and pointing out that in the matter of logic, they were the only two on this site that understood what Tol was saying! Ive never thought of RT as a skeptic and I was surprised Steyn engaged him for the court battle with Mann.
Anthony argued that UHI was a growing warming bias in temperature readings and Mosher and NOAA and the choir said, nah, you can leave the thermometers next to AC exhausts, BBQs, jet engine warmups, black asphalt rooves and pavements. It doesn’t change the temperature readings. Anthony even invented a thermometer system for cars to drive through cities from the country and plot their own UHI profiles and these showed the effect rather well. (Have you still got these for sale, Anthony?).
I guess when you have your PhD in temperature mechanics and data tortional wroughting, UHI needn’t be a problem. What troubles me is when we argued natural variation it was rubbished by the tortionists, but, eventually when they needed it, hey, yeah, but that was due to the AMO and PDO hiding in the Gulf of Mexico because of CAGW, or something. When we argued that the warming stopped for 20 years, dozens of climate scientists came down with the Climate Blues, a clinical depression that ended all their careers (they rationalized it in a noble way, but it was clearly дэиуал which is what makes you sick. You’ve wasted your life through graduate school and 30 years of studying fantasy – yeah hard to face). Eventually the tortionists that were about to retire with fat pensions drew straws and we got Karlization of temperatures that blew away the Pause before the rest of the tougher skinned folks came down with CB.
Remember long after the science was settled they had to acknowledge ocean decadal oscillations were even in the picture, record snowfalls and freezing temperatures, endless droughts got copiously rained on, BBQ summers sold out of longjohns, the Ship of Fools got stuck in summer ice (another victim of climate blues: Turney. He came out of the clinic and cried about the thousands of dead Adelie penguins, which later turned out to have died a hundred years ago with no predators to eat them and too cold for the microbes. Haven’t heard from him since, anyone?). They had to call out the climate tortionists and rewrite history a bit, but, hey, we use the same tools for rewriting history and we do the temperature records. Currently the Pause is in and then out, as is the MWP, LIA and other things, depending on if they can be used by the tortionists.
Anyway, I was glad to see UHI back I thought once written out, it was gone – I’m not used to the is Post Normal way of doing things. It complicates the logic for us lesser intellects.
I wonder how that all works? The UHI factor is perfectly “removed” from every disparate UHI area in the world that houses a temperature monitor. These resulting temperatures are then extrapolated to represent all temperatures in the world in order to create the world’s average temperature within a hundredth of a degree with no error bars, (at least none reported by press). Do I have that right?
Wow, now Urban heat islands affect the Climate. We must get rid of those Rural Areas; then Climate Control will be complete!
I’m not worried; the super rats will eat the Urbanites . Problem solved, plenty of food for the Rural dwellers.
‘heat-trapping concrete’
Concrete has a high albedo. Thus reflects sunlight and absorbs less heat than most other surfaces.
And, humidity is more important than temperature changes, of the the magnitude we are talking about, to energy consumption, productivity, etc.
Having lived in hot humid and hot dry climates. I can assure you that when temperatures are around 30C in a hot humid climate you will run you airconditioner. Whereas at the same temperature in a dry climate you wouldn’t dream of turning on your airconditioner.
The relevance of this, is that many of the steps taken to ‘cool’ urban areas, increase humidity. The main exception is high albedo roofs for buildings. If you look at Perth, Australia on Google Earth, you will see that large numbers of buildings have what appear to be white roofs. In fact, the roofs are highly reflective steel. They appear white because of how much sunlight they reflect.
Or you can just wash down the roads and let evaporation take care of the rest and we get clean roads.
Simple question. How does CO2 cause the Heat Island Effect? CO2 has nothing to do with the heat island effect. Turning cool grass into extreme heat sinks like asphalt and concrete have nothing to do with CO2.
“How does CO2 cause the Heat Island Effect?” It does not.
I discussed UHI factor under Chapter 7 – Ecological Changes in my book “Climate Change: Myths & Realities” in 2008. In this book on page opposite to page 113 the same figure presented in the present article on UHI. In this chapter also presented urban growth along with a aerial photo “a Summer in the City” of downtown Sacramento in 1998 [Published in a daily newspaper] along with rate of heat island growth in some US cities.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Many urban centers will benefit from net heating in the reduction of heating costs in winter. Of course, in warmer latitudes, air conditioning costs will drive up overall energy demand, and more importantly, peak demand.
I’ve always thought the very best use of solar would be to use it in a specific way to air condition buildings in hot climates, thereby reducing peak demand on electricity grids in those places.
Here’s the Lovin’ Spoonful’s best song:
Prof Tol makes a fundamentally valid point that as a practical matter, steps to cool urban areas will have more direct impact on the climate most people live in, than steps to control GHGs. As I referred to above, in the ‘hot’ city of Perth, Australia, people are cooling buildings with high albedo roofs.
It’s interesting to note that, while Australia spends vast amounts on climate policies, the installation of high albedo roofs, has been entirely due to individual choices, without government subsidies or intervention. Where I live in an older area of Perth, high albedo roofs on homes has gone from almost none 30 years ago, to about 50% today.
That’s right, Philip. If you’re worried about global warming, then you should be worried about local warming too. It’s much easier to do something about local warming.
Yes, Tol is right about that. Local Albedo change is much easier than changing the makeup of the atmosphere.
i.e., Urban heat island effect is far more important than global warming.