Fast Urbanization Causes Overestimation of Global Warming Trends

Abstract

The contribution of urbanization to the global warming tendency has not been evaluated accurately. We propose that comparing the temperature records of relocated new meteorological stations to those of old meteorological stations is a better method for evaluating the urbanization contribution than the current methods. On the Web of Science and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, previous studies on temperature records of paired old and relocated new meteorological stations were searched and selected. As a result, we gathered temperature data from 57 paired stations and discovered that the old stations' temperature was 0.66 ℃ higher than the new stations' (-0.90 to 1.63 ℃). The urbanization process may be responsible for more than 60% of the current temperature rise trends. Furthermore, there are strong correlations between periods of global warming and regional rapid urbanization, implying that rapid urbanization causes overestimation of global warming trends. Finally, the IPCC's assessment of global warming should be revised in the next report based on paired urban and rural temperature datasets from globally relocated meteorological stations.