Evidence for a Strong Association of Short-Duration Intense Rainfall with Urbanization in the Beijing Urban Area

Yang, Ping; Ren, Guoyu; Yan, Pengcheng

doi:10.1175/jcli-d-16-0671.1

Cited by 101 publications

(82 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Similar results reported by Chen et al (2015) and Yang et al (2017) showed that higher UHI intensity might induce stronger convection and cause larger hourly precipitation in urban areas than in the rural areas in the late evening and night-time. Furthermore, pronounced precipitation difference during the night-time hours could be related to the interaction between the weakening sea breeze and the UHI (Shepherd et al 2010, Mitra et al 2012.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…Further, the velocity perturbations in a stably stratified atmosphere could be decreased by the UHI-generated gravity waves (Han et al 2014). Thus, water vapor transport and upward movement of convergence can be triggered by the UHI circulation, and the existence of enough moisture can lead to more precipitation in urban areas (Yang et al 2017). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban impacts on air temperature and precipitation over The Netherlands

Golroudbary¹,

Zeng²,

Mannaerts³

et al. 2018

Clim. Res.

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“…Some previous studies suggested that urbanization could initiate and enhance convective activity and warm‐season rainfall over and downwind of the urban area (Burian & Shepherd, ; Hand & Shepherd, ; Kishtawal et al, ; W. Li et al, ; Lin et al, ; Mitra et al, ; Shem & Shepherd, ; Shepherd et al, ; Yang, Ren, & Yan, ). A number of physical mechanisms were proposed to explain the positive role of urbanization on convection and precipitation; these can be summarized as follows: (1) the urban heat island (UHI) effect (Bornstein & Lin, ; Dixon & Mote, ; Lin et al, ; Miao et al, ; Oke, ; Shem & Shepherd, ), (2) increased urban surface roughness (Baik et al, ; Lin et al, ; Shem & Shepherd, ; Thielenet al, ), (3) urban modification of the composition/structure of an approaching thunderstorm (Niyogi et al, ), and (4) increased urban aerosols enhance rainfall by invigorating convection as more latent heat is released by the formation of ice particles from smaller cloud drops (Fan et al, ; Khain et al, ; Rosenfeld et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Extensive Urbanization on Summertime Rainfall in the Beijing Region and the Role of Local Precipitation Recycling

2018

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In this study, we conducted nested high‐resolution simulations using the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with a single‐layer urban canopy model to investigate the impact of extensive urbanization on regional precipitation over the Beijing‐Tianjin‐Hebei region in China. The results showed that extensive urbanization decreased precipitation considerably over and downwind of Beijing city. The prevalence of impermeable urban land inhibits local evaporation that feeds moisture into the overlying atmosphere, decreasing relative humidity and atmospheric instability. The dynamic precipitation recycling model was employed to estimate the precipitation that originates from local surface evaporation and large‐scale advection of moisture. Results showed that about 11% of the urbanization‐induced decrease in total precipitation over the Greater Beijing Region and its surroundings was contributed by the decrease in local recycled precipitation, while the other part (89%) was due to decreasing large‐scale advected precipitation. Results suggest that the low evaporation from urban land surfaces not only reduces the supply of water vapor for local recycled precipitation directly but also decreases the convective available potential energy and hence the conversion efficiency of atmospheric moisture into rainfall. The urbanization‐induced variations in local recycled precipitation were found to be correlated with the net atmospheric moisture flux on a monthly time scale.

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“…At the national scale, urbanization contributed 10.2% of increase and −12.4% of decrease in PRCPTOT (Figure ). Previous studies have found a strong association between short‐duration intense precipitation and urbanization in which short‐duration intense precipitation tends to be more frequent and more intensive in or near the central urban areas than in rural areas (Yang et al ., ). On the one hand, the increase in short‐duration intense precipitation events may not considerable enough to affect precipitation extremes but significantly raises the total precipitation.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The increasing precipitation is not only reflected by total precipitation but also the occurrence times of precipitation. Taking Beijing urban area as an example, frequent short‐duration intense precipitation events happen in or near the central area, and most of them begin to occur in late evening and night‐time, but tend to end in late night and early morning (Yang et al ., ). Thus, we detected evident potential contributions of urbanization to total precipitation trend and consecutive wet days.…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Potential contributions of climate change and urbanization to precipitation trends across China at national, regional and local scales

Zhang

Singh

et al. 2019

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Climate change and urbanization collectively influence precipitation changes. However, their separate potential contributions to precipitation changes are not well understood due to their complex interactions. Hence, a “trajectory”‐based method was used to separate their potential contributions across national, regional and local scales in China. Precipitation changes in non‐urban regions can be regarded as representing the influence of climate change and can serve as a reference for isolating precipitation changes due to urbanization in urban areas. Our results revealed that climate change was the dominant factor for precipitation trends, while urbanization exhibited a relatively weak influence, especially for extreme precipitation at the national scale. At the regional scale, the impacts of urbanization on precipitation became more significant. About 20.2 and −30.6% of positive and negative trends in total precipitation originated from urbanization. At the local scale, the potential contribution of urbanization was strongly correlated with local environmental characteristics. Although there were differences in the potential contributions of climate change and urbanization at national, regional and local scales, climate change was the dominant factor for precipitation trends and urbanization acted as a regulator to drying or wetting due to precipitation under climate change. In general, urbanization causes a greater impact on total precipitation than on precipitation extremes. Due to this, attribution approach is static and broad‐based and does not render the level of confidence that is needed for scale‐aware attribution, future studies are needed to understand the physical mechanisms of impacts of local environment changes on precipitation trends at different geographical locations over China.

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Evidence for a Strong Association of Short-Duration Intense Rainfall with Urbanization in the Beijing Urban Area

Cited by 101 publications

References 56 publications

Urban impacts on air temperature and precipitation over The Netherlands

Urban impacts on air temperature and precipitation over The Netherlands

Impact of Extensive Urbanization on Summertime Rainfall in the Beijing Region and the Role of Local Precipitation Recycling

Potential contributions of climate change and urbanization to precipitation trends across China at national, regional and local scales

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