Can urban shrinkage contribute to mitigating surface air temperature warming?

In recent years, urban areas are increasingly experiencing intense warming. Although urbanization is an important driver of warming in urban environments, it remains unclear whether depopulation trends in shrinking cities mitigate this warming effect. Here, we explored the relationship between shrinking cities and observed warming in China. Of the 356 Chinese cities, 95 were identified as shrinking between 2000 and 2010. We categorized 2419 observation stations into three groups—rural, shrinking, and non-shrinking—and generated a surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly series for each group from 1961 to 2014. Temperature differences between the shrinking and non-shrinking urban stations were investigated. Using segmented generalized least squares regression, the spatiotemporal temperature patterns across the mean (Tmean), maximum (Tmax), and minimum temperatures (Tmin), diurnal temperature range (DTR) indicators, and across seasons—spring, summer, autumn, and winter—were explored. Results revealed a cooling effect in shrinking cities, with decadal decreases of 0.042 °C (–0.078 to –0.005 °C), 0.083 °C (–0.126 to –0.039 °C), and 0.029 °C (–0.062 to –0.005 °C) in regional Tmean, Tmax, and Tmin anomalies, respectively. Moreover, pronounced seasonality was identified in this phenomenon—the cooling effect was most notable for Tmean in spring and Tmax in autumn, less significant in summer, and negligible in winter. These results suggested that the population decline in shrinking cities could alleviate regional warming, having implications that could influence urban planning and climate mitigation policies.