Melbourne urban heat island contamination of temperature trend maps in Victoria, Australia

Abstract

The paper presents a regression analysis of the temperature data measured by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in their historical measuring stations in Victoria. All the downloaded data was free of quality issues and referred to specific geographical locations, with only minor gaps in the recorded data. Temperatures at stations located in regional Victoria show no growth in the long, medium and short term. Temperatures in the greater Melbourne area show growth biased by the establishment of a metropolitan heat island. Corrected for the heat island effect, the temperature changes are minimal.