Abstract
Urbanization has accelerated dramatically across the world over the past decades. Urban influence on surface temperatures is now being considered as a correction term in climatological datasets. Although prior research has investigated urban influences on precipitation for specific cities or selected thunderstorm cases, a comprehensive examination of urban precipitation anomalies on a global scale remains limited. This research is a global analysis of urban precipitation anomalies for over one thousand cities worldwide. We find that more than 60% of the global cities and their downwind regions are receiving more precipitation than the surrounding rural areas. Moreover, the magnitude of these urban wet islands has nearly doubled in the past 20 y. Urban precipitation anomalies exhibit variations across different continents and climates, with cities in Africa, for example, exhibiting the largest urban annual and extreme precipitation anomalies. Cities are more prone to substantial urban precipitation anomalies under warm and humid climates compared to cold and dry climates. Cities with larger populations, pronounced urban heat island effects, and higher aerosol loads also show noticeable precipitation enhancements. This research maps global urban rainfall hotspots, establishing a foundation for the consideration of urban rainfall corrections in climatology datasets. This advancement holds promise for projecting extreme precipitation and fostering the development of more resilient cities in the future.
Recommended Citation
X. Sui et al., "Global Scale Assessment of Urban Precipitation Anomalies," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 121, no. 38, article no. e2311496121, National Academy of Sciences, Sep 2024.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2311496121
Department(s)
Biological Sciences
Publication Status
Open Access
Keywords and Phrases
cities; global change; rainfall extremes; urban sustainability
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
1091-6490; 0027-8424
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2025 The Authors, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Publication Date
17 Sep 2024
PubMed ID
39250669
Comments
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Grant DE-SC0023243