Urbanization Impact on Regional Wind Stilling: A Modeling Study in the Beijing‐Tianjin‐Hebei Region of China

Abstract

Prominent slowdown in near-surface wind speed (NSWS) has been observed in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region of China, which has important implications for regional haze mitigation and wind energy production. Other than large-scale climatic variation, this decline is suspected of being linked to the impact of urbanization. Based on nested high-resolution simulations using the Weather Research and Forecasting model, we assessed quantitatively the respective roles of urban development and anthropogenic heat (AH) in regional NSWS change over the BTH region from a climatological perspective. The contribution of urbanization to station average annual NSWS over 1980-2018 was estimated to be approximately −0.37 m s −1 , with the largest decline exceeding −1.0 m s −1 in some highly urbanized areas. The effect of urban development on NSWS was found partly offset by the AH effect. Urbanization-induced NSWS decrease was most remarkable in spring and early in the night. Urbanization impacts on NSWS were more remarkable when regional prevailing winds were northeasterly and northwesterly. Further analysis showed that the simulated urbanization-induced decreases in NSWS were highly correlated with the background regional NSWS levels. Our simulation results indicated that urbanization was an important but not a dominant cause of the observed regional wind stilling, even in such a rapidly urbanizing region, although it had remarkable influence on local NSWS in highly urbanized areas.

The analysis of the spatiotemporal variations and mechanisms for the near-surface wind speed over China in the last 40 years

“…In this paper, the wind speed change mechanisms in China are analyzed from two aspects: upper wind elds and uneven warming between high and low latitude zones. In addition to the above two aspects, the variation of near-surface wind speed may be closely related to the aerosol forcing and land use changes (Deng et al 2021a), urbanization (Wang et al 2020), larger-scale ocean-atmosphere circulations (Zha et al 2021), Arctic Oscillation (AO) (Ge et al 2021), etc. In the future, it would be of great signi cance to study the variation mechanisms of near-surface wind speed in China from various aspects, and to quantitatively identify the main in uencing factors of near-surface wind speed variations in different periods and regions.…”

An assessment of observed wind speed and wind power density over China for 1980–2021

“…These findings suggest that in recent years, the global wind speed also has had a weak mean state and variability. Many previous studies have suggested that large‐scale circulations and urbanization are important factors to the observed wind stilling 40,68–70 . The Siberian high pressure impacts the NWS variation on the decadal timescale by influencing weather regime occurrence over Eastern Asia 68 .…”

“…The Siberian high pressure impacts the NWS variation on the decadal timescale by influencing weather regime occurrence over Eastern Asia 68 . As for urbanization, it ignored in the regional NWS decline, but it does not play a dominant role 40 . More research is required to make out the reasons for the long‐term trends in the mean state for NWS.…”

“…Using 506 stations, the NWS of East China is observed to have a consistent declination at À0.16 m s À1 decade À1 . 39 Some studies indicate that urbanization has an important but not dominant role in the regional wind stilling, 40 but its influence is more remarkable in highly urbanized areas, like East China. 39,41 However, some studies also observed a recent break in the "stilling" condition in China.…”

Contribution of variations in Northern Hemisphere annular mode to the near-surface wind speed changes over Eastern China for 1979-2017

“…3). The most distinctive manifestation of anthropogenic LUCC is urbanization (Zha et al 2016;Wang et al 2020). Effects of urbanization on NWS were revealed by both observation and numerical simulation (Tab.…”