

Cities affect surrounding temperatures for thousands of miles - sbkirk
http://phys.org/news/2013-01-cities-affect-temperatures-thousands-miles.html

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epochwolf
After reading the article I was disappoint to find out this is merely a guess
based on the assumption the model they are using is otherwise correct.

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ams6110
Sounds like most of the rest of climate science to me.

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sergiosgc
If this kind of effect is still being studied, is there some hope that it is
correctly compensated when measuring planet temperatures?

From the article, it looks like the known effect is the urban heat island
effect, which I assume is modeled correctly when predicting global warming.
This new effect has about the same magnitude, but affects a much wider area.

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ams6110
Urban heat island should not have much effect since is is simply re-radiation
of energy (mostly solar) that was there already. The new effect is additional
heat introduced by burning fuel.

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meric
You make a good point. Concentrating the release of energy in a small area in
a relatively small time frame is bound to affect temperature surrounding the
city for many miles around the city. This heat is distributed through the
atmosphere.

