City-descriptive input data for urban climate models: Model requirements, data sources and challenges

Masson, Valéry; Heldens, Wieke; Bocher, Erwan; Bonhomme, Marion; Bucher, Bénédicte; Burmeister, Cornelia; Munck, Cécile de; Esch, Thomas; Hidalgo, Julia; Kanani-Sühring, Farah; Kwok, Yu-Ting; Lemonsu, Aude; Lévy, Jean-Pierre; Maronga, Björn; Pavlik, Dirk; Petit, Gwendall; See, Linda; Schoetter, Robert; Tornay, Nathalie; Votsis, Athanasios; Zeidler, Julian

doi:10.1016/j.uclim.2019.100536

Cited by 110 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 143 publications

(97 reference statements)

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“…This CONUS-wide LCZ map contributes to this effort, and should be considered as a complementary source of information to existing and commonly-used land-cover maps such as the National land-cover Database 29 , which provides a limited number of urban classes (open space and developed low-, medium- and high-intensity areas). The latter classes typically reflect a degree of imperviousness, yet lack additional information on other types of urban characteristics that are key for various climate, weather, environment, and urban planning purposes 30 , 34 , 92 .…”

Section: Technical Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combining expert and crowd-sourced training data to map urban form and functions for the continental US

et al. 2020

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Although continental urban areas are relatively small, they are major drivers of environmental change at local, regional and global scales. Moreover, they are especially vulnerable to these changes owing to the concentration of population and their exposure to a range of hydro-meteorological hazards, emphasizing the need for spatially detailed information on urbanized landscapes. These data need to be consistent in content and scale and provide a holistic description of urban layouts to address different user needs. Here, we map the continental United States into Local Climate Zone (LCZ) types at a 100 m spatial resolution using expert and crowd-sourced information. There are 10 urban LCZ types, each associated with a set of relevant variables such that the map represents a valuable database of urban properties. These data are benchmarked against continental-wide existing and novel geographic databases on urban form. We anticipate the dataset provided here will be useful for researchers and practitioners to assess how the configuration, size, and shape of cities impact the important human and environmental outcomes.

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Section: Technical Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combining expert and crowd-sourced training data to map urban form and functions for the continental US

et al. 2020

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“…[93] reviewed the results of climatic and vegetation surveys in urban environments relying on static, mobile or aerial laser scanning. We identified few examples of microclimate urban studies employing the LIDAR technique for showing the vegetation effects on urban climate [94][95]. Such results highlighted the relevance of LIDAR acquired data in urban green space planning under an increasing need for urban climate change adaptation.…”

Section: Light Detecting and Ranging (Lidar)mentioning

confidence: 78%

“…Ancillary data are contextual information incorporated in urban climate studies together with meteorological input. [95] classify the input data for both mesoscale and microscale urban modelling in five categories, as follows: (1) land cover, (2) building morphology, (3) building design and architecture, (4) building use, anthropogenic heat and socio-economic data, and (5) urban vegetation data. This paper describes several data sources referring to air quality, land cover / land use, and urban morphology.…”

Section: Ancillary Data Resourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meteorological and Ancillary Data Resources for Climate Research in Urban Areas

Cheval

Micu

Dumitrescu

et al. 2020

Climate

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An increasing plethora of both meteorological and ancillary data are presently available for climate research and applications in urban areas. The data are often held by local or national institutions (i.e., meteorological services, universities or environmental agencies). This paper outlines a total number of 33 datasets, organized into three main categories of meteorological data resources (14 datasets) and four categories of ancillary data resources (19 datasets), selected for their potential to support urban climate studies, but also for their free accessibility. Such a collection cannot be exhaustive, but we aim to draw the attention of the scientific community to relevant datasets, freely available at temporal and spatial resolutions appropriate for urban climatology. Each dataset contains information about its availability, limitations, and examples of research in urban areas.

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“…The 3-Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 5610 R. Schoetter et al: Coupling SURFEX and Meso-NH at multiple levels D building geometry directly influences the atmospheric flow (Moonen et al, 2012) in the urban roughness sublayer whose depth is about 2-5 times the characteristic building height (Roth, 2000). It also leads to the interception of solar radiation and the trapping of infrared radiation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-layer coupling between SURFEX-TEB-v9.0 and Meso-NH-v5.3 for modelling the urban climate of high-rise cities

Schoetter¹,

Kwok

Munck³

et al. 2020

Geosci. Model Dev.

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Abstract. Urban canopy models (UCMs) represent the exchange of momentum, heat, and moisture between cities and the atmosphere. Single-layer UCMs interact with the lowest atmospheric model level and are suited for low- to mid-rise cities, whereas multi-layer UCMs interact with multiple levels and can also be employed for high-rise cities. The present study describes the multi-layer coupling between the Town Energy Balance (TEB) UCM included in the Surface Externalisée (SURFEX) land surface model and the Meso-NH mesoscale atmospheric model. This is a step towards better high-resolution weather prediction for urban areas in the future and studies quantifying the impact of climate change adaptation measures in high-rise cities. The effect of the buildings on the wind is considered using a drag force and a production term in the prognostic equation for turbulent kinetic energy. The heat and moisture fluxes from the walls and the roofs to the atmosphere are released at the model levels intersecting these urban facets. No variety of building height at grid-point scale is considered to remain the consistency between the modification of the Meso-NH equations and the geometric assumptions of TEB. The multi-layer coupling is evaluated for the heterogeneous high-rise, high-density city of Hong Kong. It leads to a strong improvement of model results for near-surface air temperature and relative humidity, which is due to better consideration of the process of horizontal advection in the urban canopy layer. For wind speed, model results are improved on average by the multi-layer coupling but not for all stations. Future developments of the multi-layer SURFEX-TEB will focus on improving the calculation of radiative exchanges, which will allow a variety of building heights at grid-point scale to be taken into account.

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City-descriptive input data for urban climate models: Model requirements, data sources and challenges

Cited by 110 publications

References 143 publications

Combining expert and crowd-sourced training data to map urban form and functions for the continental US

Combining expert and crowd-sourced training data to map urban form and functions for the continental US

Meteorological and Ancillary Data Resources for Climate Research in Urban Areas

Multi-layer coupling between SURFEX-TEB-v9.0 and Meso-NH-v5.3 for modelling the urban climate of high-rise cities

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