New paper: Urban Heat Island effect accounts for 56% of warming in urban areas over past 55 years

A paper published last week in the journal Atmospheric Environment finds that the urban heat island effect accounts for 56% of the total temperature increase in South Korean city stations over the past 55 years. Warmists constantly downplay the urban heat island (UHI) effect as insignificant, but as this paper and several others show, the UHI does cause very significant biases with stations reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are poorly sited.

Quantitative Estimates of Warming by Urbanization in South Korea over the Past 55 Years (1954-2008)

Maeng-Ki Kim and Seonae Kim

Abstract: The quantitative values of the urban warming effect over city stations in the Korean peninsula were estimated by using the warming mode of Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis of 55 years of temperature data, from 1954 to 2008. The estimated amount of urban warming was verified by applying the multiple linear regression equation with two independent variables: the rate of population growth and the total population.
Through the multiple linear regression equation, we obtained a significance level of 0.05% and a coefficient of determination of 0.60. This means that it is somewhat liable to the estimated effects of urbanization, in spite of the settings of some supposition. The cities that show great warming due to urbanization are Daegu, Pohang, Seoul, and Incheon, which show values of about 1.35, 1.17, 1.16, and 1.10°C, respectively. The areas that showed urban warming less than 0.2°C are Chupungnyeong and Mokpo. On average, the total temperature increase over South Korea was about 1.37 °C; the amount of increase caused by the greenhouse effect is approximately 0.60 °C, and the amount caused by urban warming is approximately 0.77 °C.

Highlights
► The quantitative estimation of the urban warming based on the Empirical Orthogonal Function. ► Urban warming of 0.77 °C for 55 years over South Korea. ► Greenhouse warming of 0.60 °C for 55 years over South Korea. ► Urban warming of about 56% of total temperature increase for 55 years