CERES TEAM
Most people today live in urban areas, including cities. Cities tend to be hotter than their surrounding rural areas. This means that the local climate change experienced by most people is different from the global climate changes experienced by the rest of the world. City dwellers are experiencing more heat waves, earlier springs, and milder winters than everyone else.
What are the implications of the urban heat island (UHI) effect for our current understanding of global climate change and global warming?
In this video, we compare rural and urban weather station data to explain “urbanization bias” in cities along with possible solutions to urban heating.
Relevant links
- For the relevant discussion on urban heat islands in the IPCC’s latest (2021) assessment report, see Section 2.3.1.1.3 “Temperatures during the instrumental period – surface” in Chapter 2 of Working Group 1’s 6th Assessment Report (AR6): https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-2/
Papers referenced in the video:
- W. Soon, R. Connolly, M. Connolly, S.-I. Akasofu, S. Baliunas, J. Berglund, A. Bianchini, W.M. Briggs, C.J. Butler, R.G. Cionco, M. Crok, A.G. Elias, V.M. Fedorov, F. Gervais, H. Harde, G.W. Henry, D.V. Hoyt, O. Humlum, D.R. Legates, A.R. Lupo, S. Maruyama, P. Moore, M. Ogurtsov, C. ÓhAiseadha, M.J. Oliveira, S.-S. Park, S. Qiu, G. Quinn, N. Scafetta, J.-E. Solheim, J. Steele, L. Szarka, H.L. Tanaka, M.K. Taylor, F. Vahrenholt, V.M. Velasco Herrera and W. Zhang (2023). “The Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Land Surface Warming (1850–2018) in Terms of Human and Natural Factors: Challenges of Inadequate Data”, Climate, 11(9), 179; https://doi.org/10.3390/cli11090179. Open access.
- R. Connolly, W. Soon, M. Connolly, S. Baliunas, J. Berglund, C.J. Butler, R.G. Cionco, A.G. Elias, V. Fedorov, H. Harde, G.W. Henry, D.V. Hoyt, O. Humlum, D.R. Legates, N. Scafetta, J.-E. Solheim, L. Szarka, V.M. Velasco Herrera, H. Yan and W.J. Zhang (2023). “Challenges in the detection and attribution of Northern Hemisphere surface temperature trends since 1850”. Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics. https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4527/acf18e. (🗄️). Supplementary Materials.
- R. Connolly, W. Soon, M. Connolly, S. Baliunas, J. Berglund, C. J. Butler, R. G. Cionco, A. G. Elias, V. M. Fedorov, H. Harde, G. W. Henry, D. V. Hoyt, O. Humlum, D. R. Legates, S. Lüning, N. Scafetta, J.-E. Solheim, L. Szarka, H. van Loon, V. M. Velasco Herrera, R. C. Willson, H. Yan and W. Zhang (2021). How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? An ongoing debate. Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 21, 131. https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4527/21/6/131. (🗄️)
- W. Soon, Ronan Connolly and M. Connolly (2015). Re-evaluating the role of solar variability on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century. Earth-Science Reviews, 150, 409-452. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2015.08.010. (🗄️).
Great Video, guys ! 🙂
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Cities are warmer than the countryside. Is this a problem that needs to be corrected with reflective roof tops and other measures? So what if the cities are warmer? Are we looking at some future Pol Pot wannabe who wants to empty the city populations out into the countryside? The only issue is pretending that they represent the effect of increasing CO2 rather than the increase of concrete and asphalt. Other than that it’s a non problem, a nothing burger.
I have been in western Sydney on a really warm day.
Not only is this a huge urban heat sink, but in certain weather conditions it can become a stagnant heat sink.
It really was decidedly unpleasant even for someone used to NSW country summers.
If they can find ways of mitigating this heat build-up, it would be a good thing.
They did open “Penrith Beach” fed from the Nepean River… but it attracted too many people who couldn’t swim, and is currently closed.
Explain again? Major cities are stifling in the summer. And as the climate warms, it’s getting worse.
No evidence that CO2 has anything to do with it… you keep proving that.
Leave comments in the video presentation as well.
It will reach many more people in addition to WUWT.
Very nice we need lots more like this.
Story Tip.
Leftists are such good LOSERS. !! Democracy be damned.
Riots break out in Paris after National Rally party wins first round of snap election – YouTube
Go Le Pen !!!
Go Le Pen !!!
I’m guessing you have never lived and worked in France, and don’t read the French media.
The ‘National Rally’ is not what you seem to think it is.
What the MSM calls “The Left” in France has some pretty extreme groups. Some make Communists seem middle of the road. I’d be more worried by a government led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon (France Unbowed) than one led by Marine Le Pen if I was still living in rural France.
Maybe. But they are both authoritarian big government. Their programs both include massive giveaways to everyone they can think of. Mélenchon appears to want to giveaway France itself to anyone who wants to come. Either one of them would first spook the markets and then bankrupt the country. Though Le Pen appears to be dropping some of the party’s previous fiscal wackiness, and seems to be moving more in a direction of economic rationality.
Don’t be too encouraged by that however. The radical right in Europe has traditionally dropped some of its economic eccentricities in order to get business on side, and business has been willing to work along with the other parts of the agenda in the mistaken impression that this tames the radicalness of the regime.
France is in trouble. Its fiscal situation is out of control, there seems to be no end to debt rising faster than the economy is growing, and its situation with previous immigration is an increasing economic drag on any efforts to remedy this. It has a large, unintegrated minority which simply doesn’t accept the culture and values of the country its living in. The combination isn’t sustainable. Its a social and economic environment that leads to ferocious political division, which we are seeing in the elections. The pressure it generates also is liable to lead to moves to the radical populist right.
Le Pen has done a great job making her party electable. But the question is, what happens if they achieve real power in these elections and the Presidential elections later, and if pressure continues to build, as it will. They will find themselves with a set of problems which are insoluble by the means available to normal democratic regimes. And who will be Le Pen’s successor, then?
Sooner or later France is going to have an explosion. It won’t be pretty. So what I am saying to bnice is, don’t applaud, they are not what you think they are, and their situation is not one where their accession to power is cause for celebration for their country. No on both counts.
I have no real understanding of France’s politics but here is an interesting read:
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/frances-problem-not-elections-it-socialism-warning-all
And ominously, France is not the only EU country in trouble.Here in the US we need to learn from other country’s mistakes — not repeat them.
The link is a pretty decent account. The economic challenge is to reduce the deficit and total debt. Both right and left have proposed policies which will increase both (eg lower retirement age to 60!).
The current trend is unsustainable. It will lead to debt default. So either left or right coming to power will bring default closer. But there is no other grouping with enough power to adopt more rational policies. Macron failed, and the scale of popular opposition his attempts evoked was an eye-opener.
So economic austerity is pretty much politically impossible, at least with democratic consent. Then you have the problem of integration. France’s Muslim population is around 10% – there are no official stats kept on religion because of the dogma of secularization. The problem is similar, Islam is not a purely spiritual private matter, its a doctrine of politics and culture. There is going to be no consent to integration into traditional French secular society.
All three of these issues are basically insoluble for the French given their polarized attitudes. Its not particularly the political system, no political system, at least no democratic one, can take effective action on them given these divisions and committed attitudes. So we are getting right populism, which places all the stress on advocacy of anti-immigration measures, and on measures to compel some measure of integration while increasing spending and thus deficits. We are also seeing left populism, which puts all the stress on open borders and toleration of separatism, while increasing spending and thus deficits.
In the end this is going to lead to an explosion. probably ignited by the fiscal situation. Macron did his best to hold it together with some concessions to the right in his separatism and immigration legislation in the last couple of years, also some attempts at fiscal rationality. But all he has really showed is that a solution from the center is impossible and not going to happen. Well, a solution from the right, or at least attempts at one, are going to happen. But they won’t come from Le Pen, but from her successor, and they will come after the explosion. Its drifting into a pre-revolutionary situation, and its hard to see anything stopping the drift.
Reminds one a bit of accounts of the period before the real Revolution, the twists and turns of the government trying to rescue the fiscal situation before they finally called the Estates General and everything exploded. It rhymes.
Half a dozen blokes down the pub could sort this one, and have done.
Miles of concrete and tarmac, heated buildings, hot extracted air. All raising the local temperature. Stick a thermometer in the middle, call it proof that temperatures are rising.
Another pint please mate……
Thanks for the noise. If you want an argument, the signal starts here:
https://berkeleyearth.org/archive/summary-of-findings/
The all rural USCRN reflects a faster warming rate than the mainly non-rural nClimDiv/
An explanation, based on data, is needed for claiming the US has been an exception.
UHI can increase from economic growth near a rural weather station or decrease when an urban weather station is moved to a suburban airport.
Whatever the effect of changes in UHI, which is a guess based on insufficient data and many assumptions, 71% of our planet, the oceans, are not affected.
Again with your stupidity of not comprehending that USCRN is a REFERENCE for the adjustment of other stations. ClimDiv started a bit higher and they have gradually narrowed the gap.
Anyone can show this by graphing ClimDiv-USCRN.
It is as though you are being deliberately dumb.
And as has been shown, the only warming in USCRN is at the 2016 El Nino, with a zero trend before 2015 and a cooling trend from 2017 until the start of the recent El Nino. (see below.. again)
Oceans and the atmosphere show only warming at El Nino events. (as does UAH Land)
You have continually failed completely to show any human causation of atmospheric or ocean warming.
And you continue to be totally confused by the difference between Anthropogenic URBAN warming and the basically non-existent Anthropogenic global warming.
Still waiting for your empirical evidence of warming by CO2…
How many times does the request have to be made ???
“You have continually failed completely to show any human causation of atmospheric or ocean warming”
You have continually demonstrated bias and ignorance by implying you know more about climate science than almost 100% of scientists … who have recognized the greenhouse effect since 1896 and recognized that manmade CO2 emissions add to it.
But you prefer to remain perpetually ignorant by claiming only El Ninos cause global warming, while ignoring La Nina cooling events … and ignoring the fact that El Ninos have existed during BOTH global warming and global cooling periods. I can not fix stupid, so you will remain broken.
You have zero inside knowledge about USCRN and nClimaDiv relationships concerning adjustments, but a lack of NOAA inside information and data will never stop you from spouting a tin hat, anti-scientific consensus, conspiracy theory, data free conclusion.
A burst of junk science verbal flatulence
Spouted with great confidence.
Defended with insults rather than data.
That’s your style
“You have continually demonstrated bias and ignorance by implying you know more about climate science than almost 100% of scientists …”
“Climate Science” has been a search for confirmation of what used to called CAGW (or AGW, if you prefer.)
The along came Mann and really pucked it up!
PS You may want to look into the origins of the “97% consensus”.
Mann’s Hockey Stink Tree Ring Circus hart claims unusually steady average temperatures by cherry picking incompetent tree ring proxies.
It has nothing to do with over a century of evidence that supports a greenhouse effect, which BeNasty denies, and that manmade CO2 makes the greenhouse effect stronger. I estimate the consensus at almost 100%. If you look only at peer reviewed papers the percentage is over 99%.
The science consensus on CAGW is 59% as of 2022, which is 59 percentage points too high. The CAGW consensus was never 97% although climate howlers often claim it is.
Consensus is nothing to do with science, any actual scientist knows that.
Measured evidence is.
And you failed, yet again, to produce any.
Thanks for proving me correct, again.
All you have is your silly anti-science consensus meme.
You are welcome to show us the La Nina cooling in UAH data.
You are welcome to show us the human warming in UAH data.
You remain totally empty of any actual evidence of CO2 warming.
Just rants… Why is that ?
Why do El Ninos keep getting warmer and warmer?
Residual energy from the previous one, due to continued solar input.
Haven’t you noticed the step change at each El Nino.
No evidence of human causation.
And actually the 2016 and 2023 El Nino started at about the same temperature.
Is this a recent phenomenon climatologically or has it been occurring for a long time? Do you have references to primary research showing this effect? Why is residual solar energy storage something that only causes step-warming at El Ninos?
What part of Berkeley Earth don’t you understand?
https://berkeleyearth.org/archive/summary-of-findings/
Doesn’t have to be economic growth. *ANY* land use change can affect temperature readings. Changing a nearby field from soybeans to corn, building a pond nearby, cutting down a hedgerow to expand planted area, adding a wind turbine nearby, and on and on and on.
A factor not often mentioned with regards to UHI is that, for any square meter of ground surface, there are more and more taller warm buildings over time in the way of that square meter’s view of the hemisphere of cold outer space and sky for heat radiation purposes.
Then the normal nighttime development of temperature inversion causing cool air to work its way from the ground upwards to a few dozen meters is interfered with. It isn’t just the waste heat from human building heating systems causing the phenomena.
Here’s what a gopher’s eye view of what the warm ground can radiate heat to…
Agreed. It has crossed my mind a few times that skyscrapers are IR absorbers as far as the ground is concerned.
What classification of UHI will an 80 foot tall, steel and aluminum and plastic, windmill atop a massive concrete slab fall under?
It certainly will be a heat island of some name.
The urban heat island is not only due to increased use of concrete and asphalt in cities, but also due to heat released from buildings, due to heating for comfort in winter, industrial activity, and also air conditioning in warm weather (where heat is rejected to the outdoors in their condensers).
Rooftop gardens are probably better than making all roofs from reflective materials, since the plants would be dormant and allow better absorption of sunlight in winter, so that the buildings would need less heating from fossil fuels. There may be a problem with reinforcing roofs to enable them to support the additional weight of the plants and soil, and any rain water that has seeped into the soil.
However, most single-family homes have sloping roofs, which promote runoff of rain and snow, which tends to form puddles in low points of flat roofs (or roofs intended to be flat).
It’s not clear whether using porous materials for roads is a good idea, since such roads could soften in wet weather, and possibly buckle in a heavy rain. All roads need to support the weight of vehicle traffic, including trucks. Concrete would be preferable to asphalt, since it reflects more sunlight than asphalt, although concrete roads are generally more expensive to build.
What part of Berkeley Earth don’t the producers understand? It’s bad enough for “Ceres Science” to plagiarize a respectable NASA acronym without impersonating a Greek deity to boot.
The CO2 Coalition and Friends of Science are out-grifting the fundraisers at NPR and PBS News.
UHI ….. the only thing measurable and attributed to AGW. So why does the UN and climate cabal want everyone to live in 15 minute cities?
You’ve got that exactly backwards.
WUWT has long tried to prove that rising temperatures around the globe are an artifact of siting thermometers in increasingly urbanized locations.