It would be interesting to know how much of the rise in temperature is due to a larger climate change phenomena or due to the urbanization of the area around Cape Town International Airport. A built-up area typically becomes much hotter than an area covered in vegetation and Cape Town has seen a lot of development over the last 3 decades. The catchment area for the major Cape Town dams is outside the urban area. I do not have access to this PhD dissertation so I don’t know if this is factored into the findings.
What would also be interesting is to see how the annual recorded temperatures compare before and after a major fynbos fire in the mountains around Cape Town. We have had a number of consecutive years with major fires. Depending on when during the year the fire occurred, one could expect higher daily temperatures due the bare soil.
I do not have any information on this issue but there is some work being done by UCT together with a Dutch university to try and understand this aspect better. I think that we are a long way from fully understanding such knock-on effects. At the moment I would put my money on Climate Change as the cause of wide area temperature changes, but logic says that urbanization will have some local heating impact.
dmt01
Climate trend or urbanization?
It would be interesting to know how much of the rise in temperature is due to a larger climate change phenomena or due to the urbanization of the area around Cape Town International Airport. A built-up area typically becomes much hotter than an area covered in vegetation and Cape Town has seen a lot of development over the last 3 decades. The catchment area for the major Cape Town dams is outside the urban area. I do not have access to this PhD dissertation so I don’t know if this is factored into the findings.
What would also be interesting is to see how the annual recorded temperatures compare before and after a major fynbos fire in the mountains around Cape Town. We have had a number of consecutive years with major fires. Depending on when during the year the fire occurred, one could expect higher daily temperatures due the bare soil.
tombrown
Hi.
I do not have any information on this issue but there is some work being done by UCT together with a Dutch university to try and understand this aspect better. I think that we are a long way from fully understanding such knock-on effects. At the moment I would put my money on Climate Change as the cause of wide area temperature changes, but logic says that urbanization will have some local heating impact.
Tom.