UHI In South Korea Ignored By GISS

By Paul Homewood

Seoul

I ran a post on this study concerning UHI in South Korea a couple of years ago, and thought it worth updating.

Quantitative estimates of warming by urbanization in South Korea over the past 55 years (1954–2008)

Kim and Kim

ABSTRACT

The quantitative values of the urban warming effect over city stations in the Korean peninsula were estimated by using the warming mode of Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis of 55 years of temperature data, from 1954 to 2008. The estimated amount of urban warming was verified by applying the multiple linear regression equation with two independent variables: the rate of population growth and the total population.

Through the multiple linear regression equation, we obtained a significance level of 0.05% and a coefficient of determination of 0.60. This means that it is somewhat liable to the estimated effects of urbanization, in spite of the settings of some supposition. The cities that show great warming due to urbanization are Daegu, Pohang, Seoul, and Incheon, which show values of about 1.35, 1.17, 1.16, and 1.10 °C, respectively. The areas that showed urban warming less than 0.2 °C are Chupungnyeong and Mokpo. On average, the total temperature increase over South Korea was about 1.37 °C; the amount of increase caused by the greenhouse effect is approximately 0.60 °C, and the amount caused by urban warming is approximately 0.77 °C.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231011007540

Warming due to urbanisation since 1954 of more than a degree should really surprise nobody, given the massive expansion and development of South Korean cities. But it raises the question of how much GISS allow for UHI there.

The results will surprise you! These are the currently operational city sites, listed by GISS as having 50,000+ populations.







Just to be clear here, to allow for UHI, past temperatures should be increased (GISS leave current ones unaltered). This is the opposite of what has happened at cities like Chunchon, where 1954 temperatures have been adjusted down.

Even at Pohang, which has the greatest UHI allowance of 0.8C, this is still well below the figure of 1.17C, which the study finds. A crude average of the above adjustments is –0.05C, so, in net terms, no allowance has been made at all for UHI.

It is sometimes claimed that these negative adjustments are caused by moving of stations from city centres, out to cooler airport sites. But this does not apply in South Korea, as, according GISS, the only airport sites is at Chunchon.

For instance, the station at Inchon is smack in the middle of the city:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/homr/#ncdcstnid=30039532&tab=LOCATIONS

It is also worth noting that there are no genuinely rural stations operational in South Korea.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?sat=4&sst=3&type=anoms&mean_gen=1212&year1=2014&year2=2014&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=rob

It is little wonder then that GISS find that Korea has warmed up by a degree or more since the 1950’s.

We are constantly told to trust the “scientists” and their algorithms. But every time we look in detail, we seem to open another can of worms.

This is a story that won’t go away.