Abstract: The release of heat into the environment for human activities, such as energy consumption and human metabolism, is called anthropogenic heat release. During the process of anthropogenic heat release, the ground and troposphere will be heated, which have several impacts on urban climate change, and furthermore which may aggravate the global climate change. The statistical data of world energy consumption from British Petroleum and the demographic information from the United Nations Population Division are used to explore the impacts of anthropogenic heat on the global climate change. The results indicate that the current global annual climatic forcing of anthropogenic heat release is not yet large, about 0.031W/m²; but with the population and the total energy consumption increasing, the future global annual climatic forcing of anthropogenic heat release may reach 0.30 W/m².

Key words: anthropogenic heat release, energy consumption, climatic forcing