According to scientific studies presented at a recent American Geophysical Union session organized by the authors, “the construction of buildings, parking lots, houses, urban areas dramatically change the:
- smoothness of a surface
- thermal conductivity (the ability of a material to transmit heat)
- hydraulic conductivity (measure of the ability of soil to transmit water)
- albedo (reflectivity off of Earth’s surfaces)
- emissivity (the ratio of radiation emitted by a body or surface) and
- vegetation cover.”
[1] Union Session of AGU Fall 2003
Human-induced Climate Variations Linked with Urbanization: From Observations to Modeling
J. Marshall Shepherd and Menglin Jin
December 12, 2003
San Francisco, USA
