This study aims to estimate the affect of urbanisation on daily maximum and minimum temperatures in the United Kingdom. Urban fractions were calculated for 10 km × 10 km areas surrounding meteorological weather stations. Using robust regression a linear relationship between urban fraction and temperature difference between station measurements and ERA-Interim reanalysis temperatures was estimated. For an urban fraction of 1.0, the daily minimum 2-m temperature was estimated to increase by 1.90 ± 0.88 K while the daily maximum temperature was not significantly affected by urbanisation. This result was then applied to the whole United Kingdom with a maximum T min urban heat island intensity (UHII) of about 1.7K in London and with many UK cities having T min UHIIs above one degree. This paper finds through the method of observation minus reanalysis that urbanisation has significantly increased the daily minimum 2-m temperature in the United Kingdom by up to 1.70 K.
K E Y W O R D SSurface temperature, United Kingdom, urban bias, urbanisationThe urban heat island intensity (UHII), which describes increased temperatures in urban areas, has long been known and attempts have been made to quantify it for many years (Mitchell, 1961;Oke, 1982). The urban heat island (UHI) develops through changes to the surface energy balance due to anthropogenic modifications to the land surface. The importance of understanding how these changes will affect the global climate and the potential bias to land temperature records arising from urbanisation has piqued interest in this area of research. Further, due to the consequences of increasing temperatures in urban areas, such as increasing air pollution and mortality rates (Johnson et al., 2005;Stedman, 2004), many studies have attempted to quantify how temperatures in highly urbanised areas will be affected by increasing urbanisation.Previous studies have generally concluded that urban warming has had a negligible effect on global scale temperature series (Peterson et al., 1999;Parker, 2004). For example, Jones et al. (1990) showed that the urban warming effect corresponds to no more than 0.1 K over the last century. However on regional scales, the affect of urbanisation on temperature may be significant. Specifically in China, where there has been large expansion of urban areas, a significant effect has been estimated. Yan et al. (2010) concluded a large impact of urbanisation up to 0.54 K/decade on local temperature series in Beijing. Whilst Zhou et al. (2004) showed a smaller urban effect of about 0.05 K/decade in south east China.This effect is not exclusive to Asia, several studies have found similar effects in Europe and parts of the United Kingdom (Emmanuel and Krüger, 2012;Grawe et al., 2013;Trusilova et al., 2008;Chrysanthou et al., 2014). To quantify the UHII, Trusilova et al. 2008 andGrawe et al. (2013) both used atmospheric models to estimate the effect of Ian L. M. Goddard and Simon F. B. Tett contributed equally to this study.