Is road construction with all of the asphalt an influence on global warming ?
The short answer is yes, but not because it makes the actual average global temperature any noticeably warmer. It actually affects our perception of the global temperature. The Urban Heat Island effect can raise the average temperature around a city by several °C. Because most of our population lives in cities, this can strongly influence the public perception of Global Warming, as people see more days without snow, or several “heat waves” in summer. More than that, most of our temperature collecting instruments are located in and around major cities in industrialized countries, where the Heat Island effect is most substantial. This leads to an upwards skew in the annual average global temperature. Currently, the size of the skew is unknown, but could be larger than the 0.5°C increase recorded over the last 100 years. Of course, this could mean that after accounting for the Heat Island effect, we may find global temperatures have actually dropped, which is well within the realm of poss
