A Review of Current Investigations of Urban-Induced Rainfall and Recommendations for the Future

Shepherd, J. Marshall

doi:10.1175/ei156.1

Cited by 613 publications

(467 citation statements)

References 66 publications

(67 reference statements)

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“…The anomalous NDVI and LST patterns for desert and xeric shrubland cities is likely a result of increased vegetation and latent heat flux in less dense 50-25% urban and suburban fringe areas due to resource (water) augmentation in those areas. This pattern has been noted previously for U.S. desert cities using AVHRR (Imhoff et al, 2004) and Landsat (Xian & Crane;2005).…”

Section: The Uhi and Ecological Contextsupporting

confidence: 86%

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Remote sensing of the urban heat island effect across biomes in the continental USA

Imhoff

Zhang

Wolfe

et al. 2010

Remote Sensing of Environment

1,186

686

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Impervious surface area (ISA) from the Landsat TM-based NLCD 2001 dataset and land surface temperature (LST) from MODIS averaged over three annual cycles (2003)(2004)(2005) are used in a spatial analysis to assess the urban heat island (UHI) skin temperature amplitude and its relationship to development intensity, size, and ecological setting for 38 of the most populous cities in the continental United States. Development intensity zones based on %ISA are defined for each urban area emanating outward from the urban core to the nonurban rural areas nearby and used to stratify sampling for land surface temperatures and NDVI. Sampling is further constrained by biome and elevation to insure objective intercomparisons between zones and between cities in different biomes permitting the definition of hierarchically ordered zones that are consistent across urban areas in different ecological setting and across scales. We find that ecological context significantly influences the amplitude of summer daytime UHI (urban-rural temperature difference) the largest (8°C average) observed for cities built in biomes dominated by temperate broadleaf and mixed forest. For all cities combined, ISA is the primary driver for increase in temperature explaining 70% of the total variance in LST. On a yearly average, urban areas are substantially warmer than the non-urban fringe by 2.9°C, except for urban areas in biomes with arid and semiarid climates. The average amplitude of the UHI is remarkably asymmetric with a 4.3°C temperature difference in summer and only 1.3°C in winter. In desert environments, the LST's response to ISA presents an uncharacteristic "U-shaped" horizontal gradient decreasing from the urban core to the outskirts of the city and then increasing again in the suburban to the rural zones. UHI's calculated for these cities point to a possible heat sink effect. These observational results show that the urban heat island amplitude both increases with city size and is seasonally asymmetric for a large number of cities across most biomes. The implications are that for urban areas developed within forested ecosystems the summertime UHI can be quite high relative to the wintertime UHI suggesting that the residential energy consumption required for summer cooling is likely to increase with urban growth within those biomes.Published by Elsevier Inc.

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Section: The Uhi and Ecological Contextsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…These results at least trend in the direction of a potential heat sink effect for arid cities postulated by some (e.g. Bounoua et al, 2009;Shepherd, 2005Shepherd, , 2006. Composite averaged summer day LST profiles across the Urban Core for the two urban areas are illustrated in Fig.…”

Section: The Uhi and Ecological Contextmentioning

confidence: 70%

Remote sensing of the urban heat island effect across biomes in the continental USA

Imhoff

Zhang

Wolfe

et al. 2010

Remote Sensing of Environment

1,186

686

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“…Building densities and reduced vegetation inhibit urban albedo and enhance the heat stored in urban areas (Erell et al 2011). The UHI effects on mesoscale circulation can be ob served in convective precipitation (Shepherd 2005). In the past decade, numerous studies have reported that urban morphological parameters can considerably influence precipitation variability (Ikebuchi et al 2007, Shem & Shepherd 2009, Niyogi et al 2011, Hu et al 2012, Willems et al 2012, Chen et al 2015.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the past decade, numerous studies have reported that urban morphological parameters can considerably influence precipitation variability (Ikebuchi et al 2007, Shem & Shepherd 2009, Niyogi et al 2011, Hu et al 2012, Willems et al 2012, Chen et al 2015. The possible mechanism leading to the discrepancy in the precipitation of urban areas and that of their surrounding areas has been discussed by Shepherd (2005) as being (1) an increased convergence due to extended surface roughness, (2) destabiliza tion caused by UHI perturbations of the planetary boundary layer, or (3) enhanced aerosols in an urban environment for cloud condensation nuclei sources.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban impacts on air temperature and precipitation over The Netherlands

Golroudbary¹,

Zeng²,

Mannaerts³

et al. 2018

Clim. Res.

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The detection of changes in the weather of urban areas is an important issue for understanding the impact of weather on human lives. Five years of basic weather observations (2011−2015) from automatic and amateur networks across The Netherlands were used to investigate the urban effects on meteorological parameters with a focus on temperature (e.g. urban heat island [UHI]) and precipitation. Representative stations were selected based on metadata and a set of criteria for data quality control. An hourly analysis indicates that UHIs are a nocturnal phenomenon in The Netherlands and are more prominent after sunset, when they exceed 2°C. A seasonal analysis shows that UHIs occur in all seasons during the year, with the most significant UHI occurring in the summer. Furthermore, the differences in the precipitation of urban and rural areas were shown to be greatest after sunrise during the day. The maximum hourly UHI and hourly precipitation distributions were analyzed using a generalized extreme value model. The occurrences of maximum precipitation are likely to be more frequent at urban stations than at the nearby rural stations. Additionally, the distinct seasonal cycle of precipitation that is dependent on the UHI demonstrates that the maximum UHI and precipitation occurred in the summer. Our results indicate that the UHI and precipitation enhancements in Dutch urban residential areas, as obtained from the data of weather amateurs, are in agreement with the results presented in the literature, and that 7% more precipitation occurs in cities than in rural areas.

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“…Although currently only about 1%-3% of the global land surface is urbanized, the spatial extent and intensity of urban development are expected to increase dramatically in the future (Shepherd 2005). More than one-half of the world's population currently lives in urban areas, and in Europe, North America, and Japan at least 80% of the population resides in urban areas (Elvidge et al 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Urban Parameterization for a Global Climate Model. Part I: Formulation and Evaluation for Two Cities

Oleson

Bonan

Feddema

et al. 2008

Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

248

210

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Urbanization, the expansion of built-up areas, is an important yet less-studied aspect of land use/land cover change in climate science. To date, most global climate models used to evaluate effects of land use/land cover change on climate do not include an urban parameterization. Here, the authors describe the formulation and evaluation of a parameterization of urban areas that is incorporated into the Community Land Model, the land surface component of the Community Climate System Model. The model is designed to be simple enough to be compatible with structural and computational constraints of a land surface model coupled to a global climate model yet complex enough to explore physically based processes known to be important in determining urban climatology. The city representation is based upon the "urban canyon" concept, which consists of roofs, sunlit and shaded walls, and canyon floor. The canyon floor is divided into pervious (e.g., residential lawns, parks) and impervious (e.g., roads, parking lots, sidewalks) fractions. Trapping of longwave radiation by canyon surfaces and solar radiation absorption and reflection is determined by accounting for multiple reflections. Separate energy balances and surface temperatures are determined for each canyon facet. A one-dimensional heat conduction equation is solved numerically for a 10-layer column to determine conduction fluxes into and out of canyon surfaces. Model performance is evaluated against measured fluxes and temperatures from two urban sites. Results indicate the model does a reasonable job of simulating the energy balance of cities.

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A Review of Current Investigations of Urban-Induced Rainfall and Recommendations for the Future

Cited by 613 publications

References 66 publications

Remote sensing of the urban heat island effect across biomes in the continental USA

Remote sensing of the urban heat island effect across biomes in the continental USA

Urban impacts on air temperature and precipitation over The Netherlands

An Urban Parameterization for a Global Climate Model. Part I: Formulation and Evaluation for Two Cities

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