The Effect of Urban Heat Island on Climate Warming in the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration in China

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) has experienced rapid urbanization and dramatic economic development since 1978 and the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration (YRDUA) has been one of the three largest urban agglomerations in China. We present evidence of a significant urban heat island (UHI) effect on climate warming based on an analysis of the impacts of the urbanization rate, urban population, and land use changes on the warming rate of the daily average, minimal (nighttime) and maximal (daytime) air temperature in the YRDUA using 41 meteorological stations observation data. The effect of the UHI on climate warming shows a large spatial variability. The average warming rates of average air temperature of huge cities, megalopolises, large cities, medium-sized cities, and small cities are 0.483, 0.314 ± 0.030, 0.282 ± 0.042, 0.225 ± 0.044 and 0.179 ± 0.046 °C/decade during the period of 1957–2013, respectively. The average warming rates of huge cities and megalopolises are significantly higher than those of medium-sized cities and small cities, indicating that the UHI has a significant effect on climate warming ( t-test, p < 0.05). Significantly positive correlations are found between the urbanization rate, population, built-up area and warming rate of average air temperature ( p < 0.001). The average warming rate of average air temperature attributable to urbanization is 0.124 ± 0.074 °C/decade in the YRDUA. Urbanization has a measurable effect on the observed climate warming in the YRD aggravating the global climate warming.

Related collections

Most cited references 42

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Impact of regional climate change on human health.

Jonathan A. Patz, Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, Tracey Holloway … (2005)

The World Health Organisation estimates that the warming and precipitation trends due to anthropogenic climate change of the past 30 years already claim over 150,000 lives annually. Many prevalent human diseases are linked to climate fluctuations, from cardiovascular mortality and respiratory illnesses due to heatwaves, to altered transmission of infectious diseases and malnutrition from crop failures. Uncertainty remains in attributing the expansion or resurgence of diseases to climate change, owing to lack of long-term, high-quality data sets as well as the large influence of socio-economic factors and changes in immunity and drug resistance. Here we review the growing evidence that climate-health relationships pose increasing health risks under future projections of climate change and that the warming trend over recent decades has already contributed to increased morbidity and mortality in many regions of the world. Potentially vulnerable regions include the temperate latitudes, which are projected to warm disproportionately, the regions around the Pacific and Indian oceans that are currently subjected to large rainfall variability due to the El Niño/Southern Oscillation sub-Saharan Africa and sprawling cities where the urban heat island effect could intensify extreme climatic events.

0 comments Cited 799 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Strong contributions of local background climate to urban heat islands.

Lei Zhao, Xuhui Lee, Ronald Smith … (2014)

The urban heat island (UHI), a common phenomenon in which surface temperatures are higher in urban areas than in surrounding rural areas, represents one of the most significant human-induced changes to Earth's surface climate. Even though they are localized hotspots in the landscape, UHIs have a profound impact on the lives of urban residents, who comprise more than half of the world's population. A barrier to UHI mitigation is the lack of quantitative attribution of the various contributions to UHI intensity (expressed as the temperature difference between urban and rural areas, ΔT). A common perception is that reduction in evaporative cooling in urban land is the dominant driver of ΔT (ref. 5). Here we use a climate model to show that, for cities across North America, geographic variations in daytime ΔT are largely explained by variations in the efficiency with which urban and rural areas convect heat to the lower atmosphere. If urban areas are aerodynamically smoother than surrounding rural areas, urban heat dissipation is relatively less efficient and urban warming occurs (and vice versa). This convection effect depends on the local background climate, increasing daytime ΔT by 3.0 ± 0.3 kelvin (mean and standard error) in humid climates but decreasing ΔT by 1.5 ± 0.2 kelvin in dry climates. In the humid eastern United States, there is evidence of higher ΔT in drier years. These relationships imply that UHIs will exacerbate heatwave stress on human health in wet climates where high temperature effects are already compounded by high air humidity and in drier years when positive temperature anomalies may be reinforced by a precipitation-temperature feedback. Our results support albedo management as a viable means of reducing ΔT on large scales.

0 comments Cited 306 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Surface urban heat island across 419 global big cities.

Shushi Peng, Shilong Piao, Philippe Ciais … (2012)

Urban heat island is among the most evident aspects of human impacts on the earth system. Here we assess the diurnal and seasonal variation of surface urban heat island intensity (SUHII) defined as the surface temperature difference between urban area and suburban area measured from the MODIS. Differences in SUHII are analyzed across 419 global big cities, and we assess several potential biophysical and socio-economic driving factors. Across the big cities, we show that the average annual daytime SUHII (1.5 ± 1.2 °C) is higher than the annual nighttime SUHII (1.1 ± 0.5 °C) (P < 0.001). But no correlation is found between daytime and nighttime SUHII across big cities (P = 0.84), suggesting different driving mechanisms between day and night. The distribution of nighttime SUHII correlates positively with the difference in albedo and nighttime light between urban area and suburban area, while the distribution of daytime SUHII correlates negatively across cities with the difference of vegetation cover and activity between urban and suburban areas. Our results emphasize the key role of vegetation feedbacks in attenuating SUHII of big cities during the day, in particular during the growing season, further highlighting that increasing urban vegetation cover could be one effective way to mitigate the urban heat island effect.

0 comments Cited 294 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

All references

Author and article information

Contributors

John Ulhoi: Role: Academic Editor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Int J Environ Res Public Health

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Int J Environ Res Public Health

Journal ID (publisher-id): ijerph

Title: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Publisher: MDPI

ISSN (Print): 1661-7827

ISSN (Electronic): 1660-4601

Publication date (Electronic): 27 July 2015

Publication date (Print): August 2015

Volume: 12

Issue: 8

Pages: 8773-8789

Affiliations

[1 ]College of Geography Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Wenyuan Road, Xianlin University District, Nanjing, 210023, China

[2 ]Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing 210046, China

Author notes

[* ]Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mails: flyingfangzi@ 123456163.com (Q.H.); luyuqi@ 123456njnu.edu.cn (Y.L.); Tel.: +86-25-8589-1952 (Q.H. & Y.L.); Fax: +86-25-8589-1745 (Q.H. & Y.L.).

Article

Publisher ID: ijerph-12-08773

DOI: 10.3390/ijerph120808773

PMC ID: 4555247

PubMed ID: 26225986

SO-VID: 2dce9bb9-14b7-44d9-891a-3712ecb7bf0f

License:

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

The Effect of Urban Heat Island on Climate Warming in the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration in China

Read this article at

Abstract

Related collections

Climate Change and Human Health

Most cited references 42

Impact of regional climate change on human health.

Strong contributions of local background climate to urban heat islands.

Surface urban heat island across 419 global big cities.

Author and article information

Contributors

Journal

Affiliations

Author notes

Article

History

Categories

Comments

Comment on this article

Similar content 248

Cited by 20

Most referenced authors 523