In unserer Serie zum städtischen Wärmeinseleffekt (UHI) geht es heute nach Asien.
China
Auf dem Höhepunkt der Klimaalarmwelle strengten sich die IPCC-nahen Webseiten sehr an, den UHI aus der Diskussion herauszuhalten. Es war der Öffentlichkeit schon recht schwer erklärbar, wie es in den Städten der Welt einen enormen UHI-Effekt gebe konnte, er aber statistisch keinen Effekt haben soll. Im Jahr 2008 zog die klimakatastrophale Plattform Skeptical Science ein Beispiel aus China heran, das zeigen sollte, dass der UHI für die Klimakurven angeblich folgenlos wäre:
…investigators have also looked at sites across rural and urban China, which has experienced rapid growth in urbanisation over the past 30 years and is therefore very likely to show UHI. The difference between ideal rural sites compared to urban sites in temperature trends has been very small:
Figure 1. Annual average temperature anomalies. Jones et al (dotted green and brown) is a dataset of 42 rural and 42 urban sites. Li et al (solid green and brown) is an adjusted dataset of 42 rural and 40 urban sites. Li (blue) is a non-adjusted set of 728 stations, urban and rural. CRUTEM3v (red) is a land-only data set (Brohan et al., 2006). This plot uses the 1954–83 base period.
Leider versäumte man es, die Li et al.-Arbeit genauer zu zitieren. Daher bleibt vorerst offen, ob es sich um Li et al. 2007 („Characteristics of urban heat island intensity of Guangzhou in 2005“) handelt. Es gibt so viele Li et al.s – und googlen lässt sich das auch schlecht.
Wie auch immer. Fünf Jahre später sieht die Welt schon wieder ganz anders aus. Im Januar 2013 veröffentlichten Kai Wu und XiuQun Yang im Chinese Science Bulletin eine Studie aus Ostchina, die Unerhörtes herausfand. Die Autoren untersuchten urbane Zentren und fanden für das Yangtze-Gebiet, dass offenbar 36-68% der gesamten Erwärmung der letzten 30 Jahre auf das UHI-Phänomen zurückgeht. Für das Pekinger Gebiet scheinen immerhin 12-24% des Temperaturanstiegs UHI-bedingt zu sein. Im Folgenden die Kurzfassung der Arbeit:
Urbanization and heterogeneous surface warming in eastern China
With the homogeneity-adjusted surface air temperature (SAT) data at 312 stations in eastern China for 1979-2008 and the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS) nighttime light data, the spatial heterogeneities of the SAT trends on different scales are detected with a spatial filtering (i.e. moving spatial anomaly) method, and the impact of urbanization in eastern China on surface warming is analyzed. Results show that the urbanization can induce a remarkable summer warming in Yangtze River Delta (YRD) city cluster region and a winter warming in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) city cluster region. The YRD warming in summer primarily results from the significant increasing of maximum temperature, with an estimated urban warming rate at 0.132–0.250°C per decade, accounting for 36%–68% of the total regional warming. The BTH warming in winter is primarily due to the remarkable increasing of minimum temperature, with an estimated urban warming rate at 0.102–0.214°C per decade, accounting for 12%–24% of the total regional warming. The temporal-spatial differences of urban warming effect may be attributed to the variation of regional climatic background and the change of anthropogenic heat release.
Auch ein Paper von Zhou & Ren im Fachjournal Inter-Research Climate Research aus dem Dezember 2011 zeigte bedeutende UHI-Effekte in China:
Change in extreme temperature event frequency over mainland China, 1961−2008
Based on homogeneity-adjusted daily temperature data from national stations, the spatial and temporal change in extreme temperature events in mainland China have been analyzed for the period 1961−2008. The analysis shows that the numbers of frost days and ice days were significantly reduced, with the most significant reduction generally in northern China for ice days but more extensively across the country for frost days. Summer days and tropical nights significantly increased along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and in southern Southwest China. The maximum values of Tmax (TXx) and Tmin (TNx) and the minimum values of Tmax (TXn) and Tmin (TNn) generally rose, and TXx and TNx significantly increased in northern China, while TXn and TNn significantly increased across the whole country. A significant reduction at a rate of −8.23 d decade−1 (−3.26 d decade–1) occurred for cool nights (days), and a significant increase at a rate of 8.16 d decade–1 (5.22 d decade–1) occurred for warm nights (days). The reduction of cool nights and cool days occurred mainly in winter, but the increase of warm days and warm nights occurred mostly in autumn and summer. Extreme cold indices were reduced, mainly after the mid-1980s, while extreme warm indices increased remarkably after the mid-1990s. The analysis also shows that, for North China, the urbanization effect on the series of extreme temperature indices was statistically significant for the negative trends of frost days, diurnal temperature range, cool nights and cool days, and for the positive trends of summer days, tropical nights, TNx, TNn, and warm nights.
Der NIPCC zitiert aus dem Paper wie folgt:
„the contributions of the urbanization effect to the overall trends ranged from 10 to 100%, with the largest contributions coming from tropical nights, daily temperature range, daily maximum temperature and daily minimum temperature,“ adding that „the decrease in daily temperature range at the national stations in North China was caused entirely by urbanization.“
Ein anderes Paper von Bian et al. aus dem Februar 2015 im Fachblatt Theoretical and Applied Climatology fand ebenfalls eine massive UHI-Beeinflussung, diesmal in Nordchina: