{"id":287326,"date":"2023-11-09T19:28:02","date_gmt":"2023-11-09T18:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=287326"},"modified":"2023-11-09T19:28:04","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T18:28:04","slug":"demographic-warming-humans-increasingly-choose-to-live-where-its-warmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=287326","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Demographic Warming\u2019: Humans Increasingly Choose to Live Where It\u2019s Warmer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From Roy Spencer, PhD.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

November 8th, 2023 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The urban heat island (UHI) was first described by Luke Howard in 1833<\/a> for London, England. Urban area air temperatures are almost always warmer than their rural surroundings, especially at night. Thus, the average human experiences warmer temperatures than they would if they lived in wilderness conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has nothing to do with global warming, and would occur even if there was no long-term \u2018global warming\u2019. In fact, since over 50% of the Earth\u2019s population now lives in urban areas (expected to increase to nearly 70% by 2045), the temperatures humans actually experience would continue to break high temperature records even without climate change. For reference, the following plot shows the increase in global population between 1800 and 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our new global gridded UHI dataset allows one to compute just how much warmth (vs wilderness conditions) the average person experiences merely because most people live where human settlements cause localized warming. The following plot shows my computed \u2018demographic warmth\u2019 (during June, July, and August) experienced by the average human and how it has changed since 1800. For comparison I\u2019ve also plotted the area-average temperature departures from the 1885-1984 average of the land portion of the HadCRUT4 thermometer dataset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What can one conclude from this plot? At a minimum it shows humans choose to live under warmer conditions just by living in densely populated areas \u2014 and increasingly so. I will leave it up to the reader to decide if it shows anything beyond that. Note that this does not include the effect of (for instance) the migration of the U.S. population from colder to warmer latitudes, which would show an additional source of demographic warming. <\/em>The warming shown by the red curve is only for urban effects relative to wilderness conditions at the same location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, don\u2019t be confused about what this means regarding the UHI impact on the thermometer measurements \u2014 that\u2019s a different subject. All this shows is an metric of human-centric experienced warmth, not a thermometer-centric estimate of how much warming from the thermometer network can be attributed to UHI effects. The UHI effect on air temperature is due to a variety of processes associated with human settlements, such as replacement of vegetation with buildings and impervious surfaces and generation of waste heat that change the daily energy budget of those locations. Our UHI dataset simply approximates all of those processes using population density as a proxy, a choice made for us by the fact that it is the best (and possibly only) long-term dataset that exists to analyze the UHI problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Roy Spencer, PhD. November 8th, 2023 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. The urban heat island (UHI) was first described by Luke Howard in 1833 for London, England. Urban area air temperatures are almost always warmer than their rural surroundings, especially at night. Thus, the average human experiences warmer temperatures than they would if they lived […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":287333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The urban heat island (UHI) was first described by\u00a0Luke Howard in 1833\u00a0for London, England. Urban area air temperatures are almost always warmer than their rural surroundings, especially at night. Thus, the average human experiences warmer temperatures th","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691824462,691818087,691821158],"class_list":{"0":"post-287326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-demographic-warming","9":"tag-global-warming","10":"tag-uhi-warming-effects","12":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/0PLNT_CS2_P01.jpg?fit=1920%2C1280&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1cKi","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":378625,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=378625","url_meta":{"origin":287326,"position":0},"title":"SHOCK CLIMATE REPORT! Urban Heat Islands Responsible for 65% of Global Warming","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"16\/05\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"A new study from the University of Alabama in Huntsville addresses the question of how much the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect is responsible for the higher temperatures at weather stations across the world. Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy have spent several years developing a novel method that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"climactic \u201cgolden age\u201d\"","block_context":{"text":"climactic \u201cgolden age\u201d","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climactic-golden-age"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/0Screenshot-2025-05-16-165630.png?fit=1200%2C671&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/0Screenshot-2025-05-16-165630.png?fit=1200%2C671&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/0Screenshot-2025-05-16-165630.png?fit=1200%2C671&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/0Screenshot-2025-05-16-165630.png?fit=1200%2C671&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/0Screenshot-2025-05-16-165630.png?fit=1200%2C671&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":349393,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=349393","url_meta":{"origin":287326,"position":1},"title":"A Demonstration: Low Correlations Do Not Necessarily Lead to Low Confidence in Data Regressions","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"29\/10\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"In a recent post I used our new Urban Heat Island (UHI) warming estimates at individual U.S. GHCN stations having at least 120 years of data to demonstrate that the homogenized (adjusted) GHCN data still contain substantial UHI effects. Therefore, spurious warming from UHI effects is inflating reported U.S. warming\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"GHCN data\"","block_context":{"text":"GHCN data","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=ghcn-data"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0urbanheatisland.jpg?fit=1200%2C648&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0urbanheatisland.jpg?fit=1200%2C648&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0urbanheatisland.jpg?fit=1200%2C648&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0urbanheatisland.jpg?fit=1200%2C648&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/0urbanheatisland.jpg?fit=1200%2C648&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":350254,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=350254","url_meta":{"origin":287326,"position":2},"title":"Urban Legends of Climate Change: Palm Springs, California","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"06\/11\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the first of what will likely be a series of posts regarding urban heat island (UHI) effects in daily record high temperatures. My previous UHI work has been using the GHCN monthly average station data of \u201cTavg\u201d (the average of the daily maximum [Tmax] and minimum [Tmin] temperatures).\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ASOS (Automated Surface Observing System)\"","block_context":{"text":"ASOS (Automated Surface Observing System)","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=asos-automated-surface-observing-system"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/0GettyImages-653859300-9c67dc4b80024296a1b2d69021efc59e.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/0GettyImages-653859300-9c67dc4b80024296a1b2d69021efc59e.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/0GettyImages-653859300-9c67dc4b80024296a1b2d69021efc59e.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/0GettyImages-653859300-9c67dc4b80024296a1b2d69021efc59e.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/0GettyImages-653859300-9c67dc4b80024296a1b2d69021efc59e.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":378577,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=378577","url_meta":{"origin":287326,"position":3},"title":"Our Urban Heat Island Paper Has Been Published","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"16\/05\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"It took the better part of two years to satisfy the reviewers, but finally our paper\u00a0Urban Heat Island Effects in U.S. Summer Surface Temperature Data, 1895\u20132023\u00a0has been published in the AMS\u00a0Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.","rel":"","context":"In \"GHCN stations\"","block_context":{"text":"GHCN stations","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=ghcn-stations"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/00glo-urban-heat-island-effect.webp?fit=1200%2C690&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/00glo-urban-heat-island-effect.webp?fit=1200%2C690&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/00glo-urban-heat-island-effect.webp?fit=1200%2C690&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/00glo-urban-heat-island-effect.webp?fit=1200%2C690&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/00glo-urban-heat-island-effect.webp?fit=1200%2C690&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":287175,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=287175","url_meta":{"origin":287326,"position":4},"title":"Examples from our New UAH Urban Heat Island Dataset","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"08\/11\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Over 50% of the population now lives in urban areas, and that fraction is supposed to approach 70% by 2045. From Roy Spencer, PhD. November 7th, 2023 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. Since few people who visit here will actually download and analyze data, I present some imagery of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"1880 through 2023\"","block_context":{"text":"1880 through 2023","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=1880-through-2023"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/00heatwaves.jpg?fit=1128%2C564&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/00heatwaves.jpg?fit=1128%2C564&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/00heatwaves.jpg?fit=1128%2C564&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/00heatwaves.jpg?fit=1128%2C564&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/00heatwaves.jpg?fit=1128%2C564&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":252651,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=252651","url_meta":{"origin":287326,"position":5},"title":"Classifying Land Temperature Stations as Either \u201cUrban\u201d or \u201cRural\u201d in UHI Studies Proves Nothing about Spurious Temperature Trends","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"13\/04\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"The mistake people have made is to assume that just because urban locations are warmer than rural locations\u00a0at any given time\u00a0that they then have a much larger spurious warming impact on\u00a0trends over time.\u00a0That is simply not true.","rel":"","context":"In \"Land Temperature Stations\"","block_context":{"text":"Land Temperature Stations","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=land-temperature-stations"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0-ghost-45.jpeg?fit=1200%2C989&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0-ghost-45.jpeg?fit=1200%2C989&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0-ghost-45.jpeg?fit=1200%2C989&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0-ghost-45.jpeg?fit=1200%2C989&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0-ghost-45.jpeg?fit=1200%2C989&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=287326"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287334,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287326\/revisions\/287334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/287333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=287326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=287326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=287326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}