Urban Warming in Japanese Cities and its relation to climate change monitoring REVIEW: Fujibe
Despite the population declining in Japan, major cities such as the capital, Tokyo are actually growing in size. In order to tie this topic into the environment, this review by Fujibe is incorporated to explain the effect of large cities and their dense populations with climate change. The phenomena of urban warming suggests that large cities have a faster rate of temperature increase due to the amount of activity, inhabitants, and energy use. Fujibe reviews urban climate change in different sections including an outline of urban warming, the extended heat island in the warm season, urban warming and climate change monitoring, and microscale effects on observed temperature change. Since this article leans more on the scientific than anthropological side, terminology and numerical data will be omitted. Overall, the temperature increase in Tokyo is at 3 degrees Celsius per century, and can even be seen in cities of medium size as well. When the heat generated by the city is blown by a sea breeze away from the city, it is referred to as an extended heat island. These results should also be considered with the biases of having the temperature monitored in dense background area. This could possibly skew the results against monitoring taken in stations with less of a populated atmosphere. This article emphasizes the amount of environmental strain that large cities have on the environment, despite the decline in population. The Tokyo metropolis will continue to attract people no matter the circumstances, so it is important to explore ways to decrease the urban warming for the future. Despite this article not being of anthropological sources, I felt was necessary to include. Although I was able to tie in environmental connections of Japanese people through the Shinto religion, I wanted to have more concrete data. As a science major, this qualitative data was essential to my topic.
Fujibe, F. (2011), Urban warming in Japanese cities and its relation to climate change monitoring. Int. J. Climatol., 31: 162–173. doi: 10.1002/joc.2142
