The Warming that Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas
November 10th, 2022 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Now that I’m back to researching the surface air temperature record and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, I decided to revisit the temperatures in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s been over 8 years since I posted about Las Vegas being the poster child for the UHI effect and I showed some warming trend calculations from the hourly temperature data at McCarren International Airport (now Harry Reid International Airport… not kidding) which suggested that much of the warming there has been from the urban heat island, not global climate change.
And this is the trouble with monitoring global climate trends — most of the land data are gathered where people build things… increasingly so. In June of last year, The Guardian, predictably, conflated the urban heat island effect with climate change when it stated,
“Driven by the climate crisis and intensified by the city’s expansive growth, Vegas is already cooking — and it is going to get worse.”
Many people don’t really make a distinction between the two. It is reasonable to ask the question, how much has the region around Las Vegas warmed in the last several decades, compared to in the city itself? The trouble is that there are few hourly temperature measurement locations with data extending back at least 50 years in the region that are rural in nature. The area is, after all, a desert, and people don’t usually choose to live in such locations.
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/11/the-warming-that-happens-in-vegas-stays-in-vegas/
