Urban heat islands vs. global climate change (Clip from Tom Nelson Podcast)

Urban areas are warmer than the surrounding countryside – the so-called “urban heat island effect”. And, over the last century, cities have been growing and expanding, meaning that these heat islands have been getting hotter. Does this have any implications for studying global climate change?

Here, I talk to Tom Nelson about this challenging scientific problem.

Some scientists have argued that since urban areas still only account for 1-3% of the planet’s surface, it’s only a local problem. They agree it’s still important because more than half of the world’s population live in urban areas and so are experiencing urban climate change. But, many have assumed that it should not make much difference to global temperature estimates.

However, as I discuss here, the problem is that urban weather stations make up most of the longest and best-kept temperature records used for calculating global temperature changes since the 19th century. So, when scientists average together all of the available temperature records, the urban records introduce an urban warming bias that doesn’t reflect the temperature changes of the rest of the planet.

On the other hand, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have claimed in their latest reports that “urbanization bias” only accounts for less than 10% of the global land warming since the 19th century.

In this clip, we discuss these seemingly contradictory scientific opinions and investigate what the science actually says.

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• Clips taken from Tom Nelson Podcast #263: https://rumble.com/v5ugj32-ronan-connolly-the-role-of-the-sun-in-climate-change-tom-nelson-pod-263.html

• Tom Nelson’s Rumble Channel: https://rumble.com/c/c-1898841

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• For more about Dr. Ronan Connolly and links to his social media channels, visit https://ronanconnollyscience.com/