Jan
Long live the Urban Heat Island Effect
Watts created this image of the UHI signature of Reno, NV. Click to go to his article.
Earlier this January, Huffington Post beat their chest and pronounced as dead the Urban Heat Island (UHI), and took a shot at Anthony Watts while they were at it.
Another climate change denier myth – this one a favorite of Anthony Watts and his “Watts Up With That” blog – has just bit the dust.
Many skeptics for years have sought to explain away decades of climate research by showing slides of weather station thermometers sited next to heating vents or surrounded by asphalt.
This much-touted “urban heat island effect” was supposed to trump all those fancy graphs and equations that egghead scientists were fixated on. Except it’s not true.
Today, Anthony Watts struck back with the usual battery of data, charts and loads of other evidence. Head there for a fascinating read.
Source: WattsUpWithThat.com
Possibly related posts:
I remain concerned that commentaries and discussions of the UHI effect are insufficiently precise. Maybe I am pedantic, but what really counts is the change in UHI effect over time.
As the WUWT piece shows, there are certainly UHI effects associated with most urban agglomerations that can be easily observed by anybody with a thermometer in their car.
However, if an urban agglomeration remains stable (ie does not grow) it is possible for the UHI effect not to change over time, which means in that instance the temperature record is not affected by the UHI effect.
The temperature record has been contaminated by sites that started off (in say 1900) as clearly remote rural locations, but which grew into substantial urban agglomerations, or perhaps airports over the period since. Those sites will report an increase in temperature that has nothing to do with global or even regional effects, but which are entirely local, and due to UHI.
The accurate way to prevent confusion on this matter is to use the term ‘delta UHI’ over time, meaning change in UHI over time.
A further problem is that towns of 10000 people are classified as rural. While that may be so in a population demographic sense, it is very clearly not the case from a UHI viewpoint. A town of 10,000 has a lot of tarmac, concrete and bricks. It burns a lot of fuel and electricity. There is a lot of human induced heating activity of various kinds.
The only sites that can be judged truly rural are those where the urbanisation is very small (say less than 50 people) and the temperature station is remote from the buildings/roads etc.
worth a look:
Stern report was changed after being published
Information was quietly removed from an influential government report on the cost of climate change after its initial publication because supporting scientific evidence could not be found.
link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7111618/Stern-report-was-changed-after-being-published.html
blog:
http://itsfaircomment-climategate.blogspot.com/2010/02/stern-report-was-changed-after-being.html