Urbanization and Urban Climate in High-Density Cities

Cities exert a strong control on climate at all scales from the street to the planet. At the scale of the city, the replacement of natural cover with paving and buildings affects the exchanges of momentum and energy with the overlying air and the displacement and storage of water. Moreover, the concentration of resource use results in the addition of heat and materials, degrading air quality. At the planetary scale, all cities contribute to varying degrees to the changing composition of the Earth’s atmosphere and to global climate change. In this Chapter, we describe the character of global urbanisation using global datasets, examine the climate impact at urban scales and discuss the management of these climates.