IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v423y2003i6939d10.1038_nature01675.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Impact of urbanization and land-use change on climate

Author

Listed:
  • Eugenia Kalnay

    (University of Maryland)

  • Ming Cai

    (University of Maryland)

Abstract

The most important anthropogenic influences on climate are the emission of greenhouse gases1 and changes in land use, such as urbanization and agriculture2. But it has been difficult to separate these two influences because both tend to increase the daily mean surface temperature3,4. The impact of urbanization has been estimated by comparing observations in cities with those in surrounding rural areas, but the results differ significantly depending on whether population data5 or satellite measurements of night light6,7,8 are used to classify urban and rural areas7,8. Here we use the difference between trends in observed surface temperatures in the continental United States and the corresponding trends in a reconstruction of surface temperatures determined from a reanalysis of global weather over the past 50 years, which is insensitive to surface observations, to estimate the impact of land-use changes on surface warming. Our results suggest that half of the observed decrease in diurnal temperature range is due to urban and other land-use changes. Moreover, our estimate of 0.27 °C mean surface warming per century due to land-use changes is at least twice as high as previous estimates based on urbanization alone7,8.

Suggested Citation

  • Eugenia Kalnay & Ming Cai, 2003. "Impact of urbanization and land-use change on climate," Nature, Nature, vol. 423(6939), pages 528-531, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:423:y:2003:i:6939:d:10.1038_nature01675
    DOI: 10.1038/nature01675
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01675
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature01675?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:423:y:2003:i:6939:d:10.1038_nature01675. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.