Abstract: With the development of human society and the acceleration of urbanization in the world, especially in China, climatic effect of urbanization has become a realistic issue with important scientif i c signif i cance. Many scientists have conducted a series of studies on the climatic effect of urbanization using observation data and the numerical simulation. In the paper, fi rstly, based on the analysis of observation data, the climatic effect of urbanization is introduced, and then, according to the three main ways (the urban land use change, anthropogenic heat release and artif i cial aerosol emissions), there is a comprehensive review and analysis of the studies on climatic effect of urbanization both in China and abroad, especially in the numerical simulation. Combined with the work of the author in recent years, the new progress in the study on climate effect of urbanization as well its the problems is summarized. The adaptation strategies for climate effect of urbanization and the future research prospects are proposed. There is a large uncertainty in the present simulation results for climate effect of urbanization. Along with the improved physical processes in model and rapid development in high-performance computing technology, the high resolution and long-period ensemble simulation is sure to become an effective way to resolve the key scientif i c issues in urbanization.