How did this slip in to the article?
An analysis of weather records at Georgia Tech reveals that the average number of heat-wave days in large U.S. cities each year had increased from nine in the mid-1950s to 19 by the mid-2000s. The news is even worse for the country’s most sprawling cities, such as Atlanta, Georgia; Tampa, Florida; and Raleigh, North Carolina: The number of heat-wave days in these cities has nearly tripled during the same time.
There are two reasons for the increase in urban areas. First, temperatures in cities are rising because of the global greenhouse effect, which is intensifying as the vehicles we drive and the energy we consume emit more and more greenhouse gases.
Second, and more important, cities are warming because of the loss of trees and other natural land cover to make way for buildings, streets, and parking lots, which are composed of materials that absorb far more thermal radiation than the natural landscape.
They still try and push the AGW notion, but, really, one of the biggest causes is, in fact, the urban island affect.
It is actually refreshing to see a news organization give both sides of the coin to an issue.
If you look at the noaa temperature gauges many of them are in parking lots or in areas that are going to skewer the readings and show a large warming trend for ground surface temperature readings.
That is why even the IPCC said we must use heat retention and not surface temperature as an accurate means of reading global warming. The problem is that the actual heat retention according to noaa’s own readings are hardly rising at all as they have done a 40 year analysis of the stratosphere, troposphere and found out that the average increase in those temperatures are only on the scale of 2/10ths of 1 degree in 40 years.
Hardly the 4-7 degrees predicted by the AGW crowd.
Teach aren’t city hot spots AGW ? I mean people built the cities. If man cuts down trees like in the Amazon or in a city and that makes the temps go up why isn’t that AGW ? And Teach please tell us what percentage of the Earth;s surface you feel is now urban ?
No, John, they aren’t. It is not “global.” Essentially, urbanized areas show an artificially higher temperature, mostly due to the buildings, metal, roofing, smog (which is not CO2), roadways, and people. The temp increases are not due to the greenhouse affect. Furthermore, if you remember what I have written for a long time, the urban island effect is where a ton of data measurement sites are located. Outside of these areas the temps are lower.