Hey Jaba, I think you may have mis-interpreted those maps! If this is one of the ones that you are referring to, with Bolivia and the surrounds with red blotches, its a temperature anomaly map, not an absolute temperature map, charting the differences in temperatures at locations against a long term average for that location.
If the average temperature in QLD goes from 24 degrees to 20 degrees against a long-term average of 22 degrees, it'll get a blue dot -
relative cooling. Likewise if the average temperature in Bolivia goes from -5 degrees to - 1 degree and the long term average temperature is -3 degrees, it will get a red dot indicating
relative heating. Its not showing - or claiming that - Bolivia is hotter than Queensland. You cannot look at the red dots in Siberia vs the blue dots in Brisbane and say that Siberia is hotter than Brisbane!! (better nightlife maybe, but thats another story!)
Flying Binghi, noone is claiming that the urban heat island effect isnt real, the analysis I linked to was done to compare rural and urban temperature measurements. The aim of that was to determine if the location of some weather stations was skewing the global average temperature measurements. Obviously if a large number of weather stations were in cities that were kept warmer, it would skew the global temperature data. Their conclusions were that - while there is definitely an urban heat island effect - it wasnt causing the observed long-term warming trend at both rural and urban measurement sites. They actually observed a cooling trend at some urban locations too, although not enough to offset the overall warming trend. This is summarised at the end of the Abstract section of the paper:
The small size, and its negative sign, supports the key conclusion of prior groups that urban warming does not unduly bias estimates of recent global temperature change.