Quantifying the anthropogenic footprint in Eastern China

Abstract

Urban heat island (UHI) is one of the most focuses in urban climate study. The parameterization of the anthropogenic heat (AH) is crucial important in UHI study, but universal method to parameterize the spatial pattern of the AH is lacking now. This paper uses the NOAA DMSP/OLS nighttime light data to parameterize the spatial pattern of the AH. Two experiments were designed and performed to quantify the influences of the AH to land surface temperature (LST) in eastern China and 24 big cities. The annual mean heating caused by AH is up to 1 K in eastern China. This paper uses the relative LST differences rather than the absolute LST differences between the control run and contrast run of common land model (CoLM) to find the drivers. The heating effect of the anthropogenic footprint has less influence on relatively warm and wet cities.