![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.newscientist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/09143508\/SEI_220783305.jpg\")
<\/div>Some cities receive more rain than their surroundings<\/p>\n
Paul Brown \/ Alamy<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
Urban environments influence the weather, causing many cities around the world to receive more rain than surrounding areas. The finding could one day inform how cities are built.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust like the way you have an urban heat island, you have an urban rainfall effect,\u201d says Dev Niyogi<\/a> at the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n He and his colleagues looked at satellite data on rainfall between 2001 and 2020 in 1056 cities and nearby rural areas across different climate regions. They found that more than 60 per cent of cities were \u201cwet islands\u201d that saw more rain than surrounding areas; some other cities were \u201cdry islands\u201d with the opposite pattern. For example, Ho Chi Minh City and Sydney were among the wettest anomalies, each with more than 100 millimetres more rainfall than their surroundings per year. Seattle and Rio de Janeiro were among the ten driest.<\/p>\n While individual cities were previously known to influence rainfall, Niyogi says this study is the first to show that this is a global pattern. \u201cWe need to look at rainfall and the city as interacting,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n