Intensifying urban imprint on land surface warming: Insights from local to global scale

Abstract

Summary: Increasing urbanization exacerbates surface energy balance perturbations and the health risks of climate warming; however, it has not been determined whether urban-induced warming and attributions vary from local, regional, to global scale. Here, the local surface urban heat island (SUHI) is evidenced to manifest with an annual daily mean intensity of 0.99°C–1.10°C during 2003–2018 using satellite observations over 536 cities worldwide. Spatiotemporal patterns and mechanisms of SUHI tightly link with climate-vegetation conditions, with regional warming effect reaching up to 0.015°C–0.138°C (annual average) due to surface energy alterations. Globally, the SUHI footprint of 1,860 cities approximates to 1% of the terrestrial lands, about 1.8–2.9 times far beyond the urban impervious areas, suggesting the enlargements of the imprint of urban warming from local to global scales. With continuous development of urbanization, the implications for SUHI-added warming and scaling effects are considerably important on accelerating global warming.

Keywords

• Earth sciences
• Climatology
• Environmental science
• Global change
• Remote sensing