IN THIS ISSUE:
- Urban Heat Island Effect Is Real, University of East Anglia Admits
- Dense Energy Has Been and Remains the Key to Progress
- Assumptions of Carbon Dioxide Atmospheric Residence Time May Be Wrong
Urban Heat Island Effect Is Real, University of East Anglia Admits
Researchers at the University of East Anglia were front and center in the Climategate scandal which erupted in 2009 when emails from scientists there were leaked or hacked and released to the public. The emails detailed how a cabal of scientists used tricks to explain away inconvenient data; tried to enforce climate orthodoxy by suppressing dissenters’ research (such as by attempting to ensure it was kept out of journals and IPCC reports); proposed destroying emails open to Freedom of Information Act demands that could expose their efforts; and worked to get editors of prominent journals fired for publishing papers that cast doubt on the claim human greenhouse gas emissions were causing dangerous climate change. Multiple hearings whitewashed the wrongdoing, but damage was done to the reputations of various research institutions and many of the scholars involved in the activities disclosed.
East Anglia was one of the main bastions of the claim that “only greenhouse gas emissions could account for the reported rise in global average temperature” (a made-up metric), citing climate models and carefully selected (cherrypicked being a more accurate description) paleo-climate proxy data. Until now, East Anglia has ignored or downplayed the impact of the well-known urban heat island (UHI) effect on global average temperatures, but it seems that’s now changing.
A team of scientists and scholars, primarily from the University of East Anglia with one member from a research institute in Germany, none of whom were affiliated with the now 17-year-old Climategate incident, have come to the conclusion that cities are warming much faster than the surrounding countryside, and can be expected to heat up faster still in the future.
Gee, where have we at The Heartland Institute heard this before? Could it have been from our own Anthony Watts’ research detailing the biases of poorly sited temperature stations and how they compromise reported temperature data, or could it be from the dozens of other scholars, and even the U.S. government’s own agencies over the years, admitting the UHI exists and is a problem, even as they continue to claim it doesn’t really compromise the official temperature record because they’ve adjusted for it?
East Anglia’s research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses attention on smaller and medium-sized cities with populations of 300,000 to 1,000,000, located in the tropics and subtropics. Because of their coarse scale, climate models fail to account for subregional temperature and weather anomalies and measurements well. This research aims to fill that gap.
To remove confounding factors that might influence temperatures—for example, hills, lakes, and oceans—the researchers excluded cities in mountain and coastal regions, to isolate temperatures changes based solely on climate and urban/suburban development. I understand what they were attempting to do by removing “confounding” factors, but I think it was a mistake. Those lakes, hills, and other natural features play a role in shaping an area’s climate. An area’s climate wouldn’t be what it is without the natural features it is composed of. For example, Denver wouldn’t be Denver if it weren’t a mile above sea level in a mountain chain, and Thessalonica wouldn’t be Thessalonica if it weren’t located on a warm coast. Locations and their geographic, natural, and built-up features are part and parcel of what makes up a particular area’s climate. Still, the researchers made the choices they made, and it wasn’t my study.
In total, the researchers ran statistical analyses to produce projections for 104 medium-sized cities. Their results indicate that due to population growth, density, and development, 81 percent of cities examined would warm by more than the surrounding areas, with 16 percent of those cities possibly warming by as much as 50 to 100 percent more than their surroundings.
Because the cities are in the warmer climates of the world, the authors, according to EurekAlert, say “these increases [are] even more significant for human health and the urban environment.”
“Medium-sized cities also represent a large proportion of global cities, with more than 2.5 times as many in this category than those with a population over one million,” writes EurekAlert. “Lead author Dr Sarah Berk, who did the work while a PhD student in UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences, said: “Under climate change, cities face not only the challenge of increasing temperatures in their surrounding areas, but also the challenge of potential changes in their heat islands.”
Even though suboptimal cold temperatures kill more people annually than excessive heat, even in warmer, tropical locales, this research is important because it suggests populations already prone to extreme heat or heat stress should prepare for even worse in the future. Their governments should adjust policies and infrastructure in anticipation of higher local temperatures than others in less-developed areas in the same region will experience.
Manoj Joshi, Ph.D., from East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit at UEA, commented on the importance of this study, telling EurekAlert,
Urban heat stress under climate change is an increasing concern, as many cities in the tropics and subtropics can be warmer than their rural surroundings, heightening their vulnerability to rising temperatures.
This analysis shows even state-of-the-art projections likely underestimate future urban warming. For example, our results suggest that several cities in North-East China and northern India are projected to warm by 3°C, despite Earth System Model projections of their hinterlands showing a warming of 1.5-2°C.
Our research enables more informed planning for the future risks to human health and the urban environment, highlighting the need to complement conventional climate modelling with approaches such as machine learning and AI.
Three of the five largest cities by population—Jalandhar, India; Fuyang, China; and Kirkuk in Iraq—were projected to experience 0.7 to 0.8°C additional change in temperature above background warming, compared to their rural surroundings. Model outputs suggested that the two other cities with the largest populations would experience negligible additional warming. Some cities are projected to see even greater warming: the team’s models found Asyut (Egypt), Patiala (India), and Shangqui (China) would likely experience 1.5 to 2°C additional warming, more than double the warming experienced in rural areas not impacted by UHI.
Only time will tell whether these projections of warming are accurate, but that is true for the whole global warming exercise. Planning ahead can’t hurt, but for me the importance of the study is its direct acknowledgment that understanding UHI, not just global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, is critical to understanding both global average temperature and regional impacts of warming on local environments and human flourishing, and that it’s not just the big cities for which models must be adjusted to account for UHI.
Sources: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; EurekAlert; Watts Up With That?
Dense Energy Has Been and Remains the Key to Progress
A recent study by the English academic and energy analyst John Constable, Ph.D., published at Net Zero Watch, explains the connection between affordable, reliable energy and economic progress and wealth creation, showing how the former has been critical to the latter across the centuries.
In particular, with the discovery of the ability to use coal, energy consumption increased dramatically, driving massive increases in economic production and human lifespans. Water consumption, the use of draft animals, and human labor also increased, but at a fraction of the rate of energy increase. Coal, being a dense, reliable energy source, was key to the Industrial Revolution that made the small island nation of Great Britain the industrial and eventually the commercial capital of the world for a time.
The increase in energy use also contributed to changes in manufacturing and production, as more and more people left the farms and fields for the factories and the cities. Constable provides data showing that as coal consumption increased, national and household wealth also increased dramatically, and death rates fell. With the discovery of and advent of the use of oil and gas, these improvements continued, and the distribution of wealth improved, with household wealth showing the greatest gains.
Over time, energy use became more efficient. Fossil fuel use continued to increase, but use of it per unit of output and GDP declined. This began to shift in the 2000s. With the onset of net-zero policies in the U.K., energy use slowed, as did economic growth, with some periods even experiencing economic contraction. Climate policies have led simultaneously to increased electricity use, built on the highly subsidized renewable sector, and higher prices for transportation and household energy uses.
After a brief comparison to recent U.S. and China energy trends, Constable concludes Western countries obsessed with controlling the climate are on the verge of reversing centuries of progress in human freedom, prosperity, and health, ceding greater geopolitical and economic power to Eastern rivals.
Sources: Net Zero Watch
Assumptions of Carbon Dioxide Atmospheric Residence Time May Be Wrong
A study recently published in the journal Science of Climate Change suggests the residence time of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is much shorter than is assumed in climate models. If that is correct, the effect of CO2 would be less than the models show, having a truncated or negligible long-term impact on the climate.
The abstract states,
There is a growing group that is convinced, the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is approximately 4 years. Another group assumes a significantly longer residence time of 30 years or more. Finding a common consensus between both sides appears difficult.
An attempt is made here to provide an approach. It can be viewed as a complement to other articles recently published in Science of Climate Change. We assume that there is a regular exchange of CO2 between the reservoirs, both in terms of absorption and emission. Without anthropogenic emissions, absorption and emission balance each other.
The approach assumes an equilibrium of CO2 concentrations between the various reservoirs. Any additional amount of CO2 introduced into the system is distributed in a constant ratio among the reservoirs.
Citing Richard Feynman, the author notes if evidence contradicts a theory, the theory is wrong. Climate models assuming a long residence time in the atmosphere have never made accurate predictions about increasing temperatures or any climate impacts that are supposed to flow from them. Therefore, the theory that climate change is being driven by human CO2 emissions with heat-trapping properties that are not physically different from natural CO2 must be rethought from the ground up.
The author’s research positing a short CO2 residency time is based on a statistical analysis of the constancy of the rate of land-biomass and oceanic absorption of CO2. The author concludes,
Both the total CO2 emissions reported by the IPCC for 2020, as well as the biomass increase and increased CO2 absorption by the oceans, rule out a residence time of anthropogenic CO2 of more than four years.
The principle of equilibrium between reservoirs does not allow for the net-zero thesis. Any additional CO2 inputs are distributed among the reservoirs in a fixed ratio.
. . . [W]e also know that many unanswered questions remain.
By itself, the paper is not dispositive, instead setting the stage for further open discussion and inquiry. This is at best the beginning of a conversation about CO2 as a possible driver of climate change, not the end.
Sources: Science of Climate Change
