Geoinformatics & Geostatistics: An OverviewISSN: 2327-4581

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Research Article, Geoinfor Geostat An Overview Vol: 1 Issue: 2

Influence of Urban Heating on the Global Temperature Land Average using Rural Sites Identified from MODIS Classifications

Wickham C1, Rohde R2, Muller RA3,4*, Wurtele J3,4, Curry J5, Groom D3, Jacobsen R3,4, Perlmutter S3,4, Rosenfeld A3 and Mosher S6
1Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, 97330, USA
2Novim Group, 211 Rametto Road, Santa Barbara, CA, 93104, USA
3Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
4Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720, USA
5GeorgiaInstitute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
6Berkeley Earth Project, Berkeley CA 94705, US
Corresponding author : Muller RA
Berkeley Earth Project, 2831 Garber St., Berkeley CA 94705, USA
Tel: 510-735-6877; E-mail: RAMuller@LBL.gov
Received: February 13, 2013 Accepted: March 11, 2013 Published: March 14, 2013
Citation: Wickham C, Rohde R, Muller RA, Wurtele J, Curry J, et al. (2013) Influence of Urban Heating on the Global Temperature Land Average using Rural Sites Identified from MODIS Classifications. Geoinfor Geostat: An Overview 1:2. doi:10.4172/2327-4581.1000104

Abstract

Influence of Urban Heating on the Global Temperature Land Average using Rural Sites Identified from MODIS Classifications

The effect of urban heating on estimates of global average land surface temperature is studied by applying an urban-rural classification based on MODIS satellite data to the Berkeley Earth temperature dataset compilation of 36,869 sites from 15 different publicly available sources. We compare the distribution of linear temperature trends for these sites to the distribution for a rural subset of 15,594 sites chosen to be distant from all MODISidentified urban areas. While the trend distributions are broad, with one-third of the stations in the US and worldwide having a negative trend, both distributions show significant warming. Time series of the Earth’s average land temperature are estimated using the Berkeley Earth methodology applied to the full dataset and the rural subset; the difference of these is consistent with no urban heating effect over the period 1950 to 2010, with a slope of -0.10 ± 0.24/100yr (95% confidence).

Keywords: UHI; Land surface temperature; GISS; CRUTEM; Berkeley Earth; MODIS

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