Improvements of Urban Representation in Weather Models Using Global Datasets

Abstract

Recent studies have proven the need for realistic urban representation in weather models. However, cities modeled using distributed urban parameters with updated urban parameterization are still few and limited to highly developed countries. Furthermore, real building datasets used to estimate the urban parameters are unavailable or lacking in other cities. This study was conducted to address both issues by expanding the advance weather model methodology to another megacity and utilizing global datasets to readily estimate a distribution of urban and other surface parameters. Sensitivity of the models to either real or global-estimated urban parameters was conducted; and the urban effect to a synoptic circulation over Istanbul was investigated. The simulation results for a typical summer day over Istanbul suggest that global datasets can be used as alternative to real building data for estimating distributed urban parameters.

Impact of urbanization on exposure to extreme warming in megacities

“…Below we describe our methods for projecting the warming between 2010 and 2050. We used a modified version of the WRF model v3.3.1 coupled with a single-layer urban canopy model [31] which has been validated in previous studies [32] , [10] . Compared to the original single-layer urban canopy model [19] which handles three urban categories (low density residential, high density residential, and commercial), in this modified version, each urban grid is modeled by five morphological parameters: average building height , plan area index , frontal area index , roughness length , and zero-plane displacement height ( d ).…”