One way to think of this in terms of what might be happening on a general rather than exclusively urban scale is to recognize that “land use changes” have been judged to play a significant, albeit minor, role in the temperature trends of the past century. If both urban and rural areas are becoming warmer beyond the effects of CO2 or other climate forcing agents because fields are being replaced by asphalt and buildings, that is a real effect, and anthropogenic in a different manner from the effect of ghgs.
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