Weather stations are key facilities to record long-term change in surface air temperature (SAT) in land. However, some weather stations are located in or near cities, and they may suffer from relocations due to the expansion of the cities and the resulting deterioration of observing settings. This is especially true in developing regions like China mainland. Most of the national stations in this region have been relocated for at least one time.
The practice has led to breakpoints in the SAT data series, and researchers have to make an adjustment called homogenization before they go further to analyze long-term change in SAT. Different homogenization procedures produced different results of the SAT trends, with some effectively restoring the urbanization effect in the historical SAT records. Thus the homogenization will bring in a new bias in the site and regional SAT data series.
Each country or region may have different practices when the weather stations are engulfed by buildings. What are you seeing in your countries or regions? Have the observational stations been also moved away from urban areas? How do you think about the possible influence of urbanization on the historical SAT records no matter what strategies have been practiced?
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