Background: Urban sprawl, as an unsustainable urban expansion, relates to direct and indirect impacts on regional climate change in urbanized regions. In this paper, the effect of urban sprawl on regional climate change has been studied using a hybrid factor analysis (FA) and analytical network process (ANP) model in Mashhad city, Iran. The methodology was divided into two main parts based on the identification of 18 urban sprawl characteristics and six climatic parameters during three time-windows of 1996, 2006, and 2016. Results: Based on the FA, a set of chosen sprawl characteristics were reduced into five factors with a maximized total variance of the loading variables and were weighted by ANP super-matrix. Results of urban sprawl index (USI) indicated that Mashhad city had experienced rapid horizontal growth by values from 0.47 to 1.74 within 1996-2016, revealing an indication of unsustainable urban sprawl during the last decades. Based on the correlation test, a positive relation between four climatic parameters (surface temperature, surface long-wave flux, total ozone, and black carbon density) and urban sprawl was observed (R from 0.827 to 0.981). In parallel, a negative relationship between two climatic parameters (total precipitation and convective precipitation) and urban sprawl was estimated (R from − 0.691 to − 0.805). Conclusions:The result confirmed the possible effects of urban sprawl on climatic variations. This outcome relates to a chain of urban sprawl effects on growth of construction, transportation, the assumption of fuels and subsequently high emission of greenhouse gasses such as ozone concentration, long-wave flux, and carbon density in the urban atmosphere.

Assessment of urban sprawl effects on regional climate change using a hybrid model of factor analysis and analytical network process in the Mashhad city, Iran. Environ Syst Res 8:23.