Anthropogenic heat

Anthropogenic heat (AH) is heat generated by humans and human activity.
Definition
The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines the term as "heat generated by buildings, people, or machinery."
Quantification
Estimates of anthropogenic heat generation can be made by totaling all the energy used for heating and cooling, running appliances, transportation, and industrial processes.
Environmental impact
AH is a small influence on rural temperatures, and becomes more significant in dense urban areas. It is one contributor to urban heat islands. Other human-caused effects (such as changes to albedo, or loss of evaporative cooling) that might contribute to urban heat islands are not considered AH by this definition.
Anthropogenic heat is a much smaller contributor to global warming than greenhouse gases. In 2005, although anthropogenic heat flux (AHF) was significantly high in certain urban areas (and can be high regionally ), globally it accounted for only 1% of the energy flux created by anthropogenic greenhouse gases. This statistic is predicted to rise as urban areas which produce AHF become more widespread.
Although AH has been shown to have influence on regional climates, climate forcing from AH are not normally calculated in state-of-the-art global climate simulations.

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