Impact of urban expansion on continental- to regional-scale warming

Although the influence of land use/land cover change on climate has become increasingly apparent, cities and other built-up areas are usually ignored when estimating large-scale historical climate change or for future projections since cities cover a small fraction of the terrestrial land surface1,2. As such, ground-based observations of urban near-surface meteorology are rare and most earth system models do not represent historical or future urban land cover3–7. Here, by combining global satellite observations of land surface temperature with historical estimates of built-up area, we demonstrate that the urban temperature signal on continental- to regional-scale warming has become non-negligible, especially for rapidly urbanizing regions in Asia. Consequently, expected urban expansion over the next century suggest further increased urban influence on surface climate under all future climate scenarios. Based on these results, we argue that, in line with other forms of land use/land cover change, urbanization should be explicitly included in future climate change assessments. This would require extensive model development to incorporate urban extent and biophysics in current-generation earth system models to quantify potential urban feedbacks on the climate system at multiple scales.