Efficient Graphics Processing Unit Modeling of Street‐Scale Weather Effects in Support of Aerial Operations in the Urban Environment

Abstract

A very large fraction of the population lives in urban and suburban areas. A United Nations (2019) report estimates that 55% of the world's population currently lives in urban areas, and this number is expected to rise to 68% by 2050. In North America, today's population living in urban areas is already estimated at 82%. This population density raises a variety of societal concerns related to transportation, air quality, fresh and waste water, human health, etc (e.g., OFCMSSR, 2004). Therefore, understanding of the urban environment is of key importance to mitigate these growing challenges. Aerial transportation is emerging as a potential

The FastEddy® Resident‐GPU Accelerated Large‐Eddy Simulation Framework: Moist Dynamics Extension, Validation and Sensitivities of Modeling Non‐Precipitating Shallow Cumulus Clouds

“…Given the accelerated simulation pace enabled by the resident-GPU implementation of FastEddy, we anticipate this extension to enable efficient scientific exploration of moist convection scenarios at very fine model grid spacings on the order of several meters. An example of the potential benefits of using FastEddy for turbulence-resolving microscale atmospheric simulations is the recent work by Muñoz-Esparza et al (2021), which investigated the weather impacts on urban street-scale micrometeorology by making use of more than 50 LES of explicitly resolved buildings at a grid spacing of 5 m driven by realistic weather. Together with the model extension presented herein, FastEddy is readily applicable to relevant problems such as cloud formation driven by urban heat island effects (e.g., Theeuwes et al, 2019) and fog development and dissipation in the urban environment (e.g., Yan et al, 2020), which we are planning to investigate in the near future.…”