The heat generated in large cities can heat the atmosphere andinfluence weather conditions in regions thousands of kilometers away, as revealed by a study published in the journalNature Climate Change. According to the authors, this phenomenon would help explain why some areas of the planet are warming above what climate models predict.
Energy consumption increases from year to year, and large cities are an important source ofresidual heatthat is generated as a consequence of it. In fact, almost half of all global energy consumption occurs in 86 metropolitan areas in the Northern Hemisphere. These human activities distribute the energy that had been ‘sequestered’ in the earth for millions of years which, although not a large amount compared to the global energy flows that flow through the planet, can alter the patterns on a regional scale.
“We have observed that energy from urban areas can heat the atmosphere in remote places, thousands of kilometers away from the areas where it is generated,” explained Guang Zhang, a researcher at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. “This effect occurs through a change in global atmospheric circulation patterns.” This would explain thewarming of up to 1 ° C observed in certain areas of Russia and 0.8 ° C in the Canadian prairies. In addition, these same changes have led to cooling in other parts of Europe, especially during the autumn.
This phenomenon would also explain the observed discrepancies between the warming predicted by climate change simulation models and the observed reality. Because of this, the researchers believe that the influence of energy consumption in large cities should be included as a variable in climate models.
