Global warming represents another example of the truth of the old saying, linked to chaos theories: the flapping of a butterfly's wings in the Amazon can cause a typhoon in Tokyo (or, as poetically described in a composition by Francis Thompson: “Thou canst not stir a flower/Without troubling of a star” – “You cannot touch a flower/Without troubling of a star”).
In this case, at the origin of the chain of events there is something more than the beating of a butterfly's wings: there is the heat emitted by large cities, where agglomerations burn fuel for heating, emit exhaust fumes, project heat from incandescent lamps… But the distance between cause and effect can be equally great, and the heat of cities can change the climate thousands of kilometers away.
A report just published by the journal "Nature Climate Change" finds that the heat emitted in major cities of the northern hemisphere ends up in atmospheric currents and affects the climate in large areas of northern Asia and the northernmost part of North America.
According to Aixue Hu, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado (author of the study), in some remote locations the warming effect can reach 1,8° more, while in some areas of Europe there can be an effect of lowering of the temperature, due to the fact that these emissions change the circulation of atmospheric currents.
Attachments: China Post
