To the editor:

A very significant factor in global warming that’s been greatly underestimated:

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (one of this country’s central climate and weather research institutes) recently completed an extensive three-year study of global warming. It concluded that manmade greenhouse gases are an important part of the overheating and destabilization of our atmosphere.

But equally important is urban sprawl, with its hundreds of thousands of miles of pavement, rooftops and other such hard surfaces that act to reflect the heat-intense infrared rays of the sun back up into the atmosphere – unlike the natural land surfaces of crops, grasses and forests, which otherwise would absorb much of this heat.

Rich Wenzel,

Lawrence