Climate change and its possible impacts on the urban areas in SW Slovakia

The paper is devoted to a brief analysis of possible climate change impacts on the sub-urban and urban areas of south-western Slovakia. Climate change due to the enhanced greenhouse effect can result in about 2.5°C increase in the mean global temperature until 2100. In Slovakia it is assumed to be a range of 2 to 4°C. On the other hand, additional warming of urban areas is caused mainly by a changed heat balance of the land surfaces in urbanized agglomerations (concrete, asphalt, buildings, cobblestones, etc.) and partly also by thermal pollution (release of energy from heating and other human activities). In smaller towns the urban effect causes warming by about 0.5°C, in the largest cities up to 2°C in the mean annual temperature on a long-term average. A review of research on urban climate in Slovakia to date is included. Future plans to study and improve urban climate are listed in the paper.