NASA Confirms Rainy Cities

Devil's BSD writes: "It's true, urban areas are rainier than rural areas. Using the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satelite to measure rainfall around cities, NASA found that areas downwind from cities had up to 116% more precipitation than those upwind from it. The cause? The major heat difference, up to about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.6 Celsius degrees), caused by the asphalt and concrete in cities. This story is posted on the Goddard Space Flight Center page."

Comments

Re:causation

[Matthias Wiesmann]

Indeed many cities are built on the border of rivers, but those rivers exist before they flow into the city and after they run out of it.

So if the change of temperature was only caused by the body of water, the whole river would cause rain down-wind (this is probably true, but is an orthogonal problem).

Claiming that the observed effects can be explained by the rivers would imply that those river do not exist outside of the city...