Cities Affect Temperatures for 1,000s of Miles
Jan 27, 2013 01:00 PM ET
by Larry O'Hanlon
... Despite the fact that heating energy in big cities is sparsely dispersed over the planet as a whole, amounting to only about 0.3 percent of the total energy coming from warmer regions to cooler regions in winter via weather and ocean currents, this human-made heat could be enough to affect the jet stream and other big atmospheric circulation systems. This means big heated cities could be altering the weather thousands of miles away in the winter.
That’s the conclusion of a group of researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Florida State University, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The researchers added the anthropogenic winter heat to climate models to test out whether it could explain real world winter warming patterns seen in some areas that had before confounded scientists. The results of the study appear in the Jan. 27 issue of journal Nature Climate Change.
Specifically, these researchers find evidence that the waste heat from buildings and cars in urban areas of the Northern Hemisphere are increasing temperatures in remote areas by as much as 1 degree C (1.8 F) in remote areas of North America and northern Asia ...
http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/cities-affect-temperatures-for-1000s-of-miles-130127.htm
= new reply since forum marked as read
In California they keep covering the ground with urban sprawl. There is a lost of 1000's of acres of agriculture land every year. The hills where nothing grows but weeds is the perfect place for homes and they do not do this in California very often.
I live in the foot hills and my county on has two stop lights and does not require SMOG testing. There is no Walmart, Kmart, etc.
So far a nice wet winter and more rain this spring.....
