Analysis of Climate Variability under Various Scenarios for Future Urban Growth in Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA), Korea

Abstract

In this study, climate variability was predicted by the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model under two different scenarios (current trends scenario; SC1 and managed scenario; SC2) for future urban growth over the Seoul metropolitan area (SMA). We used the urban growth model, SLEUTH (Slope, Land-use, Excluded, Urban, Transportation, Hill-Shade) to predict the future urban growth in SMA. As a result, the difference of urban ratio between two scenarios was the maximum up to 2.2% during 50 years (2000~2050). Also, the results of SLEUTH like this were adjusted in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to analysis the difference of the future climate for the future urbanization effect. By scenarios of urban growth, we knew that the significant differences of surface temperature with a maximum of about 4 K and PBL height with a maximum of about 200 m appeared locally in newly urbanized area. However, wind speeds are not sensitive for the future urban growth in SMA. These results show that we need to consider the future land-use changes or future urban extension in the study for the prediction of future climate changes.

Simulating the Impacts of the Greenbelt Policy Reform on Sustainable Urban Growth: The Case of Busan Metropolitan Area

“…SLEUTH has been successfully applied in various regions of the United States and the world over recent decades to simulate land-use change. Recently, SLEUTH also has been applied in South Korea to analyze the inundation of urban areas (Kim and Kim, 2014), climate variability (Kim et al, 2012) as well as land-use change (Han, 2011;Park and Ha, 2013). In addition, the greenbelt policy has been assessed for effi ciency using logistic regression (Kim and Yeo, 2008), the CA-Markov chain (Lee and Oh, 2010), and the Metronamica model (Kim, 2013).…”