Numerical weather prediction is moving toward the representation of finescale processes such as the interactions between the sea-breeze flow and urban processes. This study investigates the ability and necessity of using kilometer-to subkilometer-scale numerical simulations with the Canadian urban modeling system over the complex urban coastal area of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, during a sea-breeze event.Observations over the densely urbanized areas, collected from the Environmental Prediction in Canadian Cities (EPiCC) network and from satellite imagery, are used to evaluate several aspects of the urban boundary layer features simulated in three model configurations with different grid spacings (2.5 km, 1 km, and 250 m). In agreement with the observations, results from the numerical experiments with 1-km and 250-m grid spacings suggest that two sea-breeze flows converge over the residential areas of Vancouver. The resulting convergence line oscillates around the hill ridge, depending on thermal contrast and flow strength. This propagation mode impacts the growing urban boundary layer, with the presence of subsidence and entrainment events. Urban-induced circulation is superimposed with the sea-breeze circulation and realistically slows down the propagation of the sea-breeze front to the south. A clear improvement is obtained for numerical experiments with 1-km instead of 2.5-km grid spacing. The use of subkilometer grid spacing provides a more detailed representation of the surface thermal forcing and of local circulations, with results more sensitive to the airflow variability and, thus, to the location of measurement sites. Joint analyses of kilometer-and subkilometerscale numerical experiments are thus recommended for different environmental applications.

The Pan and Parapan American Games (PA15) are the third largest sporting event in the world and were held in Toronto in the summer of 2015 (10–26 July and 7–15 August). This was used as an opportunity to coordinate and showcase existing innovative research and development activities related to weather, air quality (AQ), and health at Environment and Climate Change Canada. New observational technologies included weather stations based on compact sensors that were augmented with black globe thermometers, two Doppler lidars, two wave buoys, a 3D lightning mapping array, two new AQ stations, and low-cost AQ and ultraviolet sensors. These were supplemented by observations from other agencies, four mobile vehicles, two mobile AQ laboratories, and two supersites with enhanced vertical profiling. High-resolution modeling for weather (250 m and 1 km), AQ (2.5 km), lake circulation (2 km), and wave models (250-m, 1-km, and 2.5-km ensembles) were run. The focus of the science, which guided the design of the observation network, was to characterize and investigate the lake breeze, which affects thunderstorm initiation, air pollutant transport, and heat stress. Experimental forecasts and nowcasts were provided by research support desks. Web portals provided access to the experimental products for other government departments, public health authorities, and PA15 decision-makers. The data have been released through the government of Canada’s Open Data Portal and as a World Meteorological Organization’s Global Atmospheric Watch Urban Research Meteorology and Environment dataset.

Using the Montreal Urban Snow Experiment (MUSE) 2005 database, surface radiation and energy exchanges are simulated in offline mode with the Town Energy Balance (TEB) and the Interactions between Soil, Biosphere, and Atmosphere (ISBA) parameterizations over a heavily populated residential area of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, during the winter-spring transition period (from March to April 2005). The comparison of simulations with flux measurements indicates that the system performs well when roads and alleys are snow covered. In contrast, the storage heat flux is largely underestimated in favor of the sensible heat flux at the end of the period when snow is melted. An evaluation and an improvement of TEB's snow parameterization have also been conducted by using snow property measurements taken during intensive observational periods. Snow density, depth, and albedo are correctly simulated by TEB for alleys where snow cover is relatively homogeneous. Results are not as good for the evolution of snow on roads, which is more challenging because of spatial and temporal variability related to human activity. An analysis of the residual term of the energy budget-including contributions of snowmelt, heat storage, and anthropogenic heat-is performed by using modeling results and observations. It is found that snowmelt and anthropogenic heat fluxes are reasonably well represented by TEB-ISBA, whereas storage heat flux is underestimated.

The Canadian urban and land surface external modeling system (known as urban GEM-SURF) has been developed to provide surface and near-surface meteorological variables to improve numerical weather prediction and to become a tool for environmental applications. The system is based on the Town Energy Balance model for the built-up covers and on the Interactions between the Surface, Biosphere, and Atmosphere land surface model for the natural covers. It is driven by coarse-resolution forecasts from the 15-km Canadian regional operational model. This new system was tested for a 120-m grid-size computational domain covering the Montreal metropolitan region from 1 May to 30 September 2008. The numerical results were first evaluated against local observations of the surface energy budgets, air temperature, and humidity taken at the Environmental Prediction in Canadian Cities (EPiCC) field experiment tower sites. As compared with the regional deterministic 15-km model, important improvements have been achieved with this system over urban and suburban sites. GEM-SURF’s ability to simulate the Montreal surface urban heat island was also investigated, and the radiative surface temperatures from this system and from two systems operational at the Meteorological Service of Canada were compared, that is, the 15-km regional deterministic model and the so-called limited-area model with 2.5-km grid size. Comparison of urban GEM-SURF outputs with remotely sensed observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) reveals relatively good agreement for urban and natural areas.

The Montreal Urban Snow Experiment was dedicated to furthering the understanding of micrometeorological processes involved in the late winter-early spring transition period in a Canadian city. A surface energy budget (SEB) measurement site was installed in a dense residential area of Montreal for several weeks in 2005 and 2006. This paper focuses on the last 6 days of the 2006 experiment (23-28 March 2006), after snowmelt and before vegetation became active, with the objectives of providing a better understanding of physical processes involved during this transition period and examining their impact on the SEB. The Town Energy Balance urban canopy model and the Interactions between Soil, Biosphere, and Atmosphere force-restore land surface model are used in stand-alone mode and are forced with meteorological data measured at the top of a 20-m AGL instrumented tower. Preliminary results reveal deficiencies in the models' ability to simulate the surface energy budget partitioning, and in particular show overestimation of the sensible heat flux. Sensitivity studies indicate that a large portion of these problems is related to the latent heat transfer involved in natural soil freeze/thaw processes, which has a significant effect on the surface energy budget in this urban area. It is also found that the SEB in this particular situation is very sensitive to the thermal roughness length used for local energy exchange over the roof and road surfaces.

A sensitivity test in which the urban surface scheme is switched off and replaced with tall grass suggests that the urban environment might have had considerable impact on precipitation intensity, but not on its occurrence or its timing. Based on diagnostics from the GEM integrations, the increased intensity of precipitation seems more related to an enhancement of lateral inflow of low-level moist static energy from Tokyo Bay than to augmented surface fluxes of heat and humidity from the city itself. The existence of lowlevel bands with locally high values of equivalent potential temperature indicates that the additional moist energy is distributed unevenly through the Tokyo area, an aspect of the simulation which is speculated to have directly contributed to the increase in precipitation intensity over the city.

A B S T R A C TRapid urbanization combined with climate change necessitates new types of urban services that make best use of science and technology. The Integrated Urban Hydro-Meteorological, Climate and Environmental Services and systems are a new initiative from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that seeks to provide science-based integrated urban services supporting safe, healthy and resilient cities. Various cities have already started development and implementation of such Integrated Urban Services and successfully test and use them following specific requirements of local stakeholders. This paper demonstrates the novel concept and approach of Integrated Urban Hydro-Meteorological, Climate and Environmental Services (IUS) from a set of four case study cities: Hong Kong, Toronto, Mexico City and Paris, that use different IUS configurations with good existing practice. These cities represent a range of countries, climates and geophysical settings. The aggregate main joint similarities of the IUS in these cities and synergy of the cities' experience, achievements and research findings are presented, as well as identification of existing gaps in knowledge and further research needs. A list of potential criteria for identifying and classifying IUS demonstration cities is proposed. It will aid future, more detailed analysis of the IUS experience, and selection of additional demonstration cities. Introduction to urban data and services needsUrbanization is an ongoing phenomenon and a growing number of urban settings are particularly vulnerable to weather and climate events, including floods, storms, heat waves, sea-level rise and poor air quality. In addition, urban dwellers are the primary users of energy and resources, and contribute in a significant way to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gasses as well as air pollution. These alterations to the atmosphere from urban to global scales have consequent impacts on human health and the environment. But the urban setting also provides exciting opportunities for scientific advancement in the field of new observations, data assimilation, high resolution coupled modeling and user-specific systems and services for sustainable and climate smart cities.Most (90%) of the disasters affecting urban areas are of a hydro-meteorological nature and these have increased due to climate https://doi.

This study aimed to assess tropical cloud properties predicted by Environment and Climate Change Canada's Global Environmental Multiscale (GEM) model when run with the Milbrandt–Yau double‐moment cloud microphysical scheme and one‐way nesting that culminated at a (∼300 km)2 inner domain with 0.25 km horizontal grid spacing. The assessment utilized satellite and in situ data collected during the High Ice Water Content (HIWC) and High Altitude Ice Crystals (HAIC) projects for a mesoscale convective system on 16 May 2015 over French Guiana. Data from CloudSat's cloud‐profiling radar and GOES‐13's imager were compared to data either simulated directly by GEM or produced by operating on GEM's cloud data with both the CFMIP (Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project) Observation Simulator Package (COSP) instrument simulator and a three‐dimensional Monte Carlo solar radiative transfer model. In situ observations were made from research aircraft – Canada's National Research Council Convair‐580 and the French SAFIRE Falcon‐20 – whose flight paths were aligned with CloudSat's ground‐track. Spatial and temporal shifts of clouds simulated by GEM compared well to GOES‐13 imagery. There are, however, differences between simulated and observed amounts of high and low cloud. While GEM did well at predicting ranges of ice‐water content (IWC) near 11 km altitude (Falcon‐20), it produces too much graupel and snow near 7 km (Convair‐580). This produced large differences between CloudSat's and COSP‐generated radar reflectivities and two‐way attenuations. On the other hand, CloudSat's inferred values of IWC agree well with in situ samples at both altitudes. Generally, GEM's visible reflectances exceeded GOES‐13's on account of having produced too much low‐level liquid cloud. It is expected that GEM's disproportioning of cloud hydrometeors will improve once it includes a better representation of secondary ice production.