TY - JOUR
T1 - Surface warming in global cities is substantially more rapid than in rural background areas
AU - Liu, Zihan
AU - Zhan, Wenfeng
AU - Bechtel, Benjamin
AU - Voogt, James
AU - Lai, Jiameng
AU - Chakraborty, Tirthankar
AU - Wang, Zhi Hua
AU - Li, Manchun
AU - Huang, Fan
AU - Lee, Xuhui
N1 - Funding Information:
This research is jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Programs for Global Change and Adaptation (2017YFA0603604), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42171306), and the Jiangsu Provincial Natural Science Foundation (BK20180009). We are also very grateful for the financial support from the National Youth Talent Support Program of China. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is operated for DOE by Battelle Memorial Institute under contract DE-AC05-76RL01830.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - Warming trends in cities are influenced both by large-scale climate processes and by local-scale urbanization. However, little is known about how surface warming trends of global cities differ from those characterized by weather observations in the rural background. Here, through statistical analyses of satellite land surface temperatures (2002 to 2021), we find that the mean surface warming trend is 0.50 ± 0.20 K·decade−1 (mean ± one S.D.) in the urban core of 2000-plus city clusters worldwide, and is 29% greater than the trend for the rural background. On average, background climate change is the largest contributor explaining 0.30 ± 0.11 K·decade−1 of the urban surface warming. In city clusters in China and India, however, more than 0.23 K·decade−1 of the mean trend is attributed to urban expansion. We also find evidence of urban greening in European cities, which offsets 0.13 ± 0.034 K·decade−1 of background surface warming.
AB - Warming trends in cities are influenced both by large-scale climate processes and by local-scale urbanization. However, little is known about how surface warming trends of global cities differ from those characterized by weather observations in the rural background. Here, through statistical analyses of satellite land surface temperatures (2002 to 2021), we find that the mean surface warming trend is 0.50 ± 0.20 K·decade−1 (mean ± one S.D.) in the urban core of 2000-plus city clusters worldwide, and is 29% greater than the trend for the rural background. On average, background climate change is the largest contributor explaining 0.30 ± 0.11 K·decade−1 of the urban surface warming. In city clusters in China and India, however, more than 0.23 K·decade−1 of the mean trend is attributed to urban expansion. We also find evidence of urban greening in European cities, which offsets 0.13 ± 0.034 K·decade−1 of background surface warming.
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U2 - 10.1038/s43247-022-00539-x
DO - 10.1038/s43247-022-00539-x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85139193677
SN - 2662-4435
VL - 3
JO - Communications Earth and Environment
JF - Communications Earth and Environment
IS - 1
M1 - 219
ER -