I would argue that concentrated constructions in big cities do change the local weather by deflecting wind and absorbing and holding sun heat. Whether those effects can change climate over the world is another story. I don't know what efforts have ever been made to observe or predict on a long range. This has nothing to do with carbon dioxide. It does have something to do with petrochemicals as ultimately they are involved in the building and maintainance of mega cities, but again, not as simple as just the hydrocarbons in the air.
Yeah, they're called heat islands, large masses of concrete with absorb a lot of heat. They don't affect larger climate to any appreciable extent, but if your measurement devices are all in the heat islands, i.e. cities/airports, then your data is going to skew higher.
They do affect wind and rainfall, and they do tend to merge into long heat islands. I think over time it exerts an effect. So do big hydraulic projects like using the Aral Sea for irrigation. That had a very long term effect.
I grew up in LA. In the 50's when I was little, it would rain once or maybe twice each summer. By the 70's, that stopped. But the pollution was enough to make tears run down my cheeks. After they controlled it, the stinging eyes stopped.
I think that was about the first time I saw LA, when flying from Phoenix to Portland. This yellow smoke was spilling over the mountains, in tendrils like some horror movie, then coalescing to a solid smoke. Here we are flying in to switch planes and visibility is almost nil. And in 1969 the Cuyahoga River caught fire, not for the first time. People forget that there was a real need for pollution control.
I would argue that concentrated constructions in big cities do change the local weather by deflecting wind and absorbing and holding sun heat. Whether those effects can change climate over the world is another story. I don't know what efforts have ever been made to observe or predict on a long range. This has nothing to do with carbon dioxide. It does have something to do with petrochemicals as ultimately they are involved in the building and maintainance of mega cities, but again, not as simple as just the hydrocarbons in the air.
Yeah, they're called heat islands, large masses of concrete with absorb a lot of heat. They don't affect larger climate to any appreciable extent, but if your measurement devices are all in the heat islands, i.e. cities/airports, then your data is going to skew higher.
They do affect wind and rainfall, and they do tend to merge into long heat islands. I think over time it exerts an effect. So do big hydraulic projects like using the Aral Sea for irrigation. That had a very long term effect.
I grew up in LA. In the 50's when I was little, it would rain once or maybe twice each summer. By the 70's, that stopped. But the pollution was enough to make tears run down my cheeks. After they controlled it, the stinging eyes stopped.
I think that was about the first time I saw LA, when flying from Phoenix to Portland. This yellow smoke was spilling over the mountains, in tendrils like some horror movie, then coalescing to a solid smoke. Here we are flying in to switch planes and visibility is almost nil. And in 1969 the Cuyahoga River caught fire, not for the first time. People forget that there was a real need for pollution control.