Abstract
The assessment of the influence of urbanisation effects on air temperature trends has been widely discussed in the literature. Urbanisation affects the urban active surface energy balance, resulting in the formation of urban heat island, also observed in the Warsaw conurbation. This article presents the diversity of long-term changes in air temperature at three Warsaw meteorological stations situated in the districts of Ursynów, Okęcie and Bielany, and demonstrates changes in thermal conditions during a long-term urbanisation process. Ursynów is the station where the changes of the surrounding area were most significant among the three analysed ones and the rise in the air temperature for this station was the greatest and it was observed from 7.5 °C in the years 1961–1970 to 8.5 °C in the years 2001–2010. The diversity of air temperature between the stations depends on their location. All of them are situated within the conurbation, at some distance from the city centre but the nature of their surroundings is different. The diversity applies to all annual characteristics of air temperature: its mean, mean maximum and mean minimum values.
Highlights
Half of the world’s population lives in cities, and this share is increasing over time, projected to reach 60% by 2030
Most of the growth in urban populations will occur in developing countries, where the growth rate is estimated at approximately twice the rate for developed countries within the 2005–2030 time frame
The assessment of the influence of urbanisation effects on air temperature trends in larger scale has been widely discussed in the literature (Wang and Yan 2016 and references therein, Kataoka et al 2009), but urban influence on global temperature series has been found to be negligible (Easterling et al 1997), with estimates for the last century not exceeding 0.1 °C
Summary
Half of the world’s population lives in cities, and this share is increasing over time, projected to reach 60% by 2030. Most of the growth in urban populations will occur in developing countries, where the growth rate is estimated at approximately twice the rate for developed countries within the 2005–2030 time frame (OECD 2008 after Hallegatte and Corfee-Morlot 2011). Considering this and the fact that the expansion of urban space directly triggers changes in the properties of the ground-level atmospheric layer, both over the urban area and beyond its limits, more and more attention is drawn to the observation and analysis of urban climates (Grimmond 2006). A study reviewing state of knowledge in advances of urban climatology, atmospheric turbulence and exchange of mass and energy in urban areas and UHI phenomenon was made by Arnfield (2003) and earlier by Lowry (1977)
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