{"id":407122,"date":"2025-10-08T19:30:43","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T17:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=407122"},"modified":"2025-10-08T19:30:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T17:30:45","slug":"the-guardian-is-wrong-cities-are-hotter-because-of-the-uhi-effect-not-increased-co%e2%82%82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=407122","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian Is Wrong: Cities Are Hotter Because of the UHI Effect, Not Increased CO\u2082"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Graph
Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From ClimateRealism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Anthony Watts<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The Guardian<\/em> published an article, \u201cWorld\u2019s major cities hit by 25% leap in extremely hot days since the 1990s,\u201d<\/a> asserting that global warming has caused a sharp rise in the number of extremely hot days in cities worldwide, citing an International Institute for Environment and Development analysis that claims urban residents from London to Tokyo now experience 25 percent more hot days each year than they did in the 1990s. The claims are highly misleading if not outright false. While cities worldwide have in fact gotten warmer, carbon dioxide increases from the burning fossil fuels are not to blame, rather data strongly suggests that the significant rise in measured temperatures in and around major cities is Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect<\/a> in response to population growth and development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article quotes scientists as saying, \u201cGlobal heating caused by fossil fuel burning is making every heatwave more intense and more likely. Extreme heat is likely to have caused the early death of millions of people over the past three decades, with elderly and poor people in fast-growing cities most deeply affected.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One telling moment comes in The Guardian<\/em> article itself, where researchers concede that \u201cfailing to adapt will condemn millions of city dwellers to increasingly uncomfortable and even dangerous conditions because of the urban heat island effect.\u201d Precisely.<\/em> It is the UHI effect, not CO\u2082, that drives the city heat trends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Guardian<\/em>\u2019s narrative collapses under scrutiny, because it ignores the UHI effect. Cities are not thermometers for the planet. They are microclimates dominated by concrete, asphalt, and glass which trap heat and bias local temperature readings upward. Peer-reviewed research by John Christy, Ph.D. and Roy Spencer<\/a>, Ph.D., published in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology<\/em> shows that urbanization is a major driver of observed warming at city weather stations. Their research found that UHI contributed to 22 percent of the raw observed warming trend on average, and up to 65 percent at suburban and urban stations<\/strong>. When examining rural stations, the effect nearly vanishes. This demonstrates that much of the increase in urban temperatures is the UHI, not global climate change. This is vividly illustrated in Figures 1 and 2 below.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Comparison
Figure 1: comparison of summer UHI effects for the United States in 1850 and 2023<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n
\"Map
Figure 2: comparison of summer UHI effects for Europe in 1850 and 2023<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A second recent analysis<\/a> from Spencer reinforces this point. He reviewed ~400 airport (WBAN) weather stations and over 2,000 cooperative observer sites across the U.S., finding that the hottest summer days have warmed by only about 1.2\u00b0F in the last 40 years. By contrast, the greatest warming has occurred in nighttime minimum temperatures, strongly linked to the growth of impervious surfaces such as roads and buildings. In other words, the data show that the warmest days\u2014the very ones The Guardian<\/em> insists are becoming intolerable\u2014have barely changed at all.<\/strong> Spencer concludes that \u201ccontrary to what we have been told, there has been very little warming of the hottest summer days averaged across the U.S. in the last 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This finding is critical. The Guardian<\/em> claims that extreme heat is spiraling upward, but the observational record shows that the real shift is in overnight lows, driven by urbanization. The daytime extremes that matter most for heatwaves have barely budged. The paper\u2019s entire thesis\u2014that fossil fuels are making the world\u2019s hottest days dramatically worse is undermined by empirical data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Guardian<\/em> also ignores historical context. The United States endured far worse heat extremes during the 1930s Dust Bowl<\/a>, when heatwaves set enduring records across the Plains. In Europe, the 1540 megadrought remains unmatched in severity. Today\u2019s urban-centered warming is small in comparison, and largely a reflection of the spread of impervious infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the health alarmism in The Guardian<\/em>\u2019s story is false. Research, like this Lancet study<\/a>, uniformly confirms that cold weather kills more people than hot weather. As a result, as Climate at a Glance: Temperature Related Deaths<\/a> shows the modest warming experienced over the past 150 years has on net reduced temperature-related mortality dramatically. The Guardian<\/em> prefers to trumpet heat deaths \u2013 deaths which could be ameliorated with proper hydration, housing, and air-conditioning \u2013 while ignoring the larger, historically persistent, risk of death from cold and the decline in deaths from cold during this period of slight warming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Urban warming is not a sign of a \u201cglobal climate crisis,\u201d despite The Guardian<\/em>\u2019s attempt to portray it as such. What people need is more accurate reporting about the causes of rising urban temperatures and for media outlets, like The Guardian<\/em>, to highlight tangible, direct interventions to prevent both heat and cold related deaths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than fighting \u201cclimate change, cities need better design and reliable, affordable energy for cooling\u2014not restrictions on hydrocarbon use, which won\u2019t impact the outside temperature, but will make it harder to keep people warm and cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The Guardian published an article, \u201cWorld\u2019s major cities hit by 25% leap in extremely hot days since the 1990s,\u201d asserting that global warming has caused a sharp rise in the number of extremely hot days in cities worldwide, citing an International Institute for Environment and Development analysis that claims urban residents from London to Tokyo now experience 25 percent more hot days each year than they did in the 1990s. The claims are highly misleading if not outright false. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":407131,"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":"Discover how the Urban Heat Island effect, not CO\u2082, influences rising city temperatures and impacts urban health and comfort levels.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"Understanding the Urban Heat Island Effect and Its Misconceptions","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":"","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":[691838639,691837983,691829997,691818056,691819743,691818087,691818262,691821374],"class_list":{"0":"post-407122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-1540-megadrought","9":"tag-1930s-dust-bowl","10":"tag-carbon-dioxide-co","11":"tag-climate-change","12":"tag-climate-propaganda","13":"tag-global-warming","14":"tag-the-guardian","15":"tag-urban-heat-island-uhi-effect","17":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0AQPKDRdw0NUnHkE5lEr4_zU5Od109A6VZuKSZb7d9ssAuE9rQRwSdrBWJqxKvZ7YHap1bJ-lm4Yy8L9oX72OAw9rW1g20gvm-mxuJWuDwv6VlgisSfWisgrHjDi3yZmB-1.jpeg?fit=1640%2C885&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1HUu","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":334314,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=334314","url_meta":{"origin":407122,"position":0},"title":"No, Bloomberg, Neither Extreme Weather Nor Climate is Worsening in Swelling Cities","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"24\/06\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"An article in Bloomberg, titled \u201cClimate Change Is Putting Swelling Cities at Risk,\u201d with the subtitle, \u201cA warming world is putting Bangladesh, Niger, Pakistan, and other countries more at risk for extreme weather,\u201d makes some false claims that are refuted by real-world data and by scientific research which examines the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Bloomberg\"","block_context":{"text":"Bloomberg","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=bloomberg"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/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\/06\/0urbanheatisland.jpg?fit=1200%2C648&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/0urbanheatisland.jpg?fit=1200%2C648&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/0urbanheatisland.jpg?fit=1200%2C648&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/0urbanheatisland.jpg?fit=1200%2C648&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":378625,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=378625","url_meta":{"origin":407122,"position":1},"title":"SHOCK CLIMATE REPORT! 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