ANALYZING SURFACE TEMPERATURE SLOPES IN CHINA, INDIA, AND PAKISTAN FROM 1940 TO 2024

This study investigates the impact of climate change on surface temperature trends in urban and rural areas across China, India, and Pakistan from 1940 to 2024. Using data from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP), we analyzed temperature slopes for twenty urban and twenty rural stations in each country, focusing on both winter and summer seasons. For example, urban station slopes went up faster during the winter while rural station slopes increased the most during the summer. This difference shows the effect of urbanization on local temperature dynamics, as seen in Beijing and Shanghai. The study also found that winter temperature changes were less extreme than summer changes in both urban and rural stations. Elevation was used as a control variable to account for its known influence on temperature. Land cover data from Esri Land Cover revealed changes from 2017 to 2023, a 6-9% increase in "Range" land in China, India, and Pakistan and a huge decrease in "Bare" land across these countries along with shifts in land use and vegetation cover.