Saving lives from extreme heat requires reducing the urban heat island effect, not CO2! – Watts Up With That?

Jim Steele

From peer review Detecting and attributing Northern Hemisphere land surface warming (1850–2018) to natural and anthropogenic factors: The challenge of incomplete data

Soon et al (2023): most of the stations used to compare the 19th century with the present urbanized… The rural-urban trend is 60% higher than the rural-only trend. It seems reasonable to assume that at least part of this additional warming is the result of urbanization bias.”

Graphic A shows U.S. weather stations with at least 70 years of data. The blue dots indicate a cooling trend (34%) and the red crosses indicate a warming trend (66%). The stations have Warming trends are concentrated in areas with the most Urban Heat Islands (Graph B), such as the Northeast, Lake Michigan, and West Coast. In contrast to the uniform CO2 global warming effect, cooling weather stations are observed inconsistently with warming weather stations. However, such contrasting pairs are easily explained by natural vegetation versus urban heat islands.

For Indianapolis, IN surface temperatures for July 2019 based on infrared satellite data reached 118F in urban centers (red in graphic D and gray areas using natural colors in graphic C). Natural temperatures only reached 68F (blue in graphic D and dark green areas in graphic C), for example the large blue area northwest of Graphic D is Eagle Creek Park.

Urban heat islands are at the heart of most heat-related deaths. The fight to save lives from unnatural extremes of heat requires mitigating urban heat island effects. Reducing CO2 is irrelevant!