[Review on studies of anthropogenic heat emission.]

With the rapid development of metropolises worldwide, the urban heat island (UHI) effect is becoming a serious environmental problem in recent years. The rapidly increasing anthropogenic heat (AH) from human activities has more significant impacts on urban microclimate which aggravates the UHI effect. The characteristics of AH emissions at different scales may vary according to different natural backgrounds. Therefore, the calculation of AH is complicated and uncertain due to the temporal and spatial variation. This review presented different methods of AH calculation according to specific case studies at home and abroad. We summarized the scales of different methods and required data set as well as the certainty of error sources. Last we discussed the advantages, limitations, and potential improvements for different approaches. By the review, we suggested that the AH research should first choose a reasonable calculation method based on spatial and temporal scales to guarantee the accuracy. The calculation of AH could provide useful information to better understand the AH emissions of specific areas, which bring more potentials to improve the living environment through rational urban planning.