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Airports have a lot of concrete, asphalt, buildings, and aircraft. Here, it's a couple degrees warmer at the airport because of that heat island, but the city is sprawled and downtown is small, so there's really no urban heat island from the city. The airport, where official weather statistics are taken, is generally warmer than any other place in the area.
Sydney Airport generally records higher temps during the day, even beating those in the inland western Sydney like Penrith. Not sure what the reason could be.
I've been seeing this website of Turkish State Meteorological Service for a long time, I hadn't noticed the 1981-2010 writting on the very below part of the page. Lol.
Coldest Month and Hottest Month Daily Mean Temps are only average temp informations given.
It also mentions about things like drought index.
But no average precipitation information.
Some districts are included here aside from provincial capitals.
Also one airport and one ski resort.
Last edited by The Grandeur; 03-25-2024 at 08:04 AM..
But the key variable is the mean, guys. I'm always a bit shocked at how in the anglosphere they tend to don't care at all about mean temperatures, and instead only watch for the abs. daily max. Well, in fact that's why they calculate the average mean by just doing (max+min)/2
Airports are generally colder than city proper (well, except in the US with its very special case of sprawling urbanism and monster concrete-jungle Apts), that meaning they have lower means.
But the key variable is the mean, guys. I'm always a bit shocked at how in the anglosphere they tend to don't care at all about mean temperatures, and instead only watch for the abs. daily max. Well, in fact that's why they calculate the average mean by just doing (max+min)/2
Airports are generally colder than city proper (well, except in the US with its very special case of sprawling urbanism and monster concrete-jungle Apts), that meaning they have lower means.
Daily mean temps are not calculated by (max+min)/2 as they are closer to one side.
It seems that it is average of hours.
Last edited by The Grandeur; 03-25-2024 at 10:53 AM..
Airports absolutely are colder than cities in the majority of cases, as the multiple people commenting in this thread have already said.
But - and in my opinion this isn't widely understood enough - not only are they not always colder, the degree to which they are colder and the reasons for which they are colder are not always the same. This means that just because you are comparing airport to airport does not equate to an apples to apples comparison - for a proper apples to apples comparison, the weather stations have to be equally representative of the cities for the same reasons.
To illustrate this, let's look at the Austin, Tallahassee, and Boston Airports, all official weather stations.
Austin Bergstrom International Airport is a natural cold hole because it is in an inherently low lying area that pools colder air at night.
Quote:
The other ASOS site is located at Austin Bergstrom International Airport. The period of record at Bergstrom goes back to October 1942. This site is located in a low lying area in the drainage basin of the Onion Creek. Because of this, the overnight low temperature in the wintertime under clear skies can sometimes be 10 degrees colder at Austin Bergstrom compared to Austin Camp Mabry.
Tallahassee International Airport is an artificial cold hole because the man-made deforestation around the weather station that causes the vast majority of Southeast US airport stations to be artificial cold holes (trees trap heat and their removal in a naturally forested area leads to artificially cold lows at weather stations) is exceptionally disproportionate.
Quote:
The Tallahassee Regional Airport, on the city's southwest side, has a minimum temperature that is colder than minima of neighboring towns and other parts of Tallahassee when clear and calm conditions prevail over the area. The anomaly is described in detail with a series of comparison studies using daily minimum temperature data from nearby locations. This cold anomaly is statistically significant and is most common during the cold season. Its cause appears to be anomalous radiational cooling resulting from enhanced exposure of the ground to open sky, and local cooling rates are probably intensified by sandy soil conditions. Cold-air drainage does not appear to be an important factor.
Previous research has shown that TLH is not representative of the minimum temperatures observed at many locations in the city. These studies have examined the available data at the regional and mesoscales. The first study, Elsner et al. (1996), compared minimum temperatures at TLH to those of other first order sites and National Weather Service (NWS) cooperative sites around the Deep South between 1965 and 1988. They found that under ideal radiational cooling conditions TLH was 2° to 6°C colder than many nearby sites under the same synoptic conditions.
https://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/91431.pdf
This means that, even if the degree to which it is colder than Tallahassee is comparable to the degree Austin Airport is colder than Austin, it cannot be compared to Austin Airport because then you're comparing a natural cold hole to a man-made artificial cold hole.
Finally, Boston Logan International Airport is a somewhat artificial warm hole, in stark contrast with the above 2 examples.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Space_League
I lived in Boston back then. The also have a warm hole airport if such a thing exists. Logan airport is much warmer than other places in the metro. It gets every bit of the UHI and every bit of the harbor moderation effect:
This ends up with Boston on paper getting a longer frost free season than places like Nashville even though most of their respective metro regions don't reflect that at all
This cannot be compared to any kind of cold hole airport, whether natural like Austin or artificial like Tallahassee.
As for my main area of expertise of the Southeast US, I think airport weather stations are generally very poor choices, since as mentioned above they have a very strong tendency to be artificial cold holes. Luckily, though, both of the above examples have non-cold hole weather stations (Austin Mabry, Tallahassee Challenger Learning Center) that help get around that problem.
Airports and town sites....'location, location, location' and importantly 'topography, topography, topography'...
Glen Innes, NSW:
Airport site:
Research Station site:
Town Post Office site:
Armidale, NSW:
Town site ( located in the valley )
Airport site (92m higher up on the high plain 6klm from town )
Generally id say you are correct, airports are typically colder than cities in the same location.
Airports are large open treeless spaces, mpstly consosting of grass and many times are next to water.
They generally are located in windy open spaces.
A city hold heat. It is made up of a mass of concrete, steel, stone, glass ect ect.. It has many tubes, tunnes, buildongs bridges ect that hold the heat and distribute it,
By comparison an airport is an open space, the cold air can sap any warmth it may hold quickly.
Its a noticeable temperature difference in most major cities.
Even when most airports if possible are built by the sea.
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