A Sensitivity Study Relating to Neighbourhood-scale Fast Local Urban Climate Modelling within the Built Environment

Abstract. Accurate and agile modelling of the climate of cities is essential for urban climate services. The Surface Urban Energy and Water balance Scheme (SUEWS) is a state-of-the-art, widely used, urban land surface model (ULSM) which simulates urban-atmospheric interactions by quantifying the energy, water and mass fluxes. Using SUEWS as the computation kernel, SuPy (SUEWS in Python), stands on the Python-based data stack to streamline the pre-processing, computation and post-processing that are involved in the common modelling-centred urban climate studies. This paper documents the development of SuPy, which includes the SUEWS interface modification, F2PY (Fortran to Python) configuration and Python frontend implementation. In addition, the deployment of SuPy via PyPI (Python Package Index) is introduced along with the automated workflow for cross-platform compilation. This makes SuPy available for all mainstream operating systems (Windows, Linux, and macOS). Furthermore, three online tutorials in Jupyter notebooks are provided to users of different levels to become familiar with SuPy urban climate modelling. The SuPy package represents a significant enhancement that supports existing and new model applications, reproducibility, and enhanced functionality.

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The impact of impervious water-storage parametrization on urban climate modelling

Urban Climate ◽

10.1016/j.uclim.2014.11.005 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 11 ◽

pp. 24-50 ◽

Cited By ~ 33

Author(s):

Hendrik Wouters ◽

Matthias Demuzere ◽

Koen De Ridder ◽

Nicole P.M. van Lipzig

Keyword(s):

Urban Climate ◽

Water Storage ◽

Climate Modelling ◽

The Impact

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Urban climate in Central European cities and global climate change

Acta climatologica et chorologica ◽

10.14232/acta.clim.2018.52.1 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 51-52 (1) ◽

pp. 7-35 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Anita Bokwa ◽

Petr Dobrovolný ◽

Tamás Gál ◽

Jan Geletič ◽

Ágnes Gulyás ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Climate Change ◽

Global Climate ◽

Urban Climate ◽

Global Changes ◽

Climate Modelling ◽

Complex Data ◽

Central European ◽

European Cities ◽

The Impact

Urban areas are among those most endangered with the potential global climate changes. The studies concerning the impact of global changes on local climate of cities are of a high significance for the urban inhabitants' health and wellbeing. This paper is the final report of a project (Urban climate in Central European cities and global climate change) with the aim to raise the public awareness on those issues in five Central European cities: Szeged (Hungary), Brno (Czech Republic), Bratislava (Slovakia), Kraków (Poland) and Vienna (Austria). Within the project, complex data concerning local geomorphological features, land use and long-term climatological data were used to perform the climate modelling analyses using the model MUKLIMO_3 provided by the German Weather Service (DWD).

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Using urban climate modelling and improved land use classifications to support climate change adaptation in urban environments: A case study for the city of Klagenfurt, Austria

Urban Climate ◽

10.1016/j.uclim.2020.100582 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 31 ◽

pp. 100582 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Sandro M. Oswald ◽

Brigitta Hollosi ◽

Maja Žuvela-Aloise ◽

Linda See ◽

Stefan Guggenberger ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Climate Change Adaptation ◽

Urban Climate ◽

Urban Environments ◽

Climate Modelling ◽

The City

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A Python-enhanced urban land surface model SuPy (SUEWS in Python, v2019.2): development, deployment and demonstration

Geoscientific Model Development ◽

10.5194/gmd-12-2781-2019 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 (7) ◽

pp. 2781-2795 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Ting Sun ◽

Sue Grimmond

Keyword(s):

Land Surface ◽

Urban Climate ◽

Land Surface Model ◽

Urban Land ◽

Surface Model ◽

Climate Modelling ◽

Mass Fluxes ◽

Online Tutorials ◽

Urban Energy ◽

Cross Platform

Abstract. Accurate and agile modelling of cities weather, climate, hydrology and air quality is essential for integrated urban services. The Surface Urban Energy and Water balance Scheme (SUEWS) is a state-of-the-art widely used urban land surface model (ULSM) which simulates urban–atmospheric interactions by quantifying the energy, water and mass fluxes. Using SUEWS as the computation kernel, SuPy (SUEWS in Python) uses a Python-based data stack to streamline the pre-processing, computation and post-processing that are involved in the common modelling-centred urban climate studies. This paper documents the development of SuPy, including the SUEWS interface modification, F2PY (Fortran to Python) configuration and Python front-end implementation. In addition, the deployment of SuPy via PyPI (Python Package Index) is introduced along with the automated workflow for cross-platform compilation. This makes SuPy available for all mainstream operating systems (Windows, Linux and macOS). Three online tutorials in Jupyter Notebook are provided to users of different levels to become familiar with SuPy urban climate modelling. The SuPy package represents a significant enhancement that supports existing and new model applications, reproducibility and enhanced functionality.

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Refined dataset to describe the complex urban environment of Hong Kong for urban climate modelling studies at the mesoscale

Theoretical and Applied Climatology ◽

10.1007/s00704-020-03298-x ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 142 (1-2) ◽

pp. 129-150 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Yu Ting Kwok ◽

Cecile De Munck ◽

Robert Schoetter ◽

Chao Ren ◽

Kevin Ka-Lun Lau

Keyword(s):

Hong Kong ◽

Urban Environment ◽

Urban Climate ◽

Climate Modelling ◽

Modelling Studies

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Evaluating the Urban Canopy Scheme TERRA_URB in the COSMO Model for Selected European Cities

10.5194/ems2021-303 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Valeria Garbero ◽

Massimo Milelli ◽

Francesca Bassani ◽

Edoardo Bucchignani ◽

Paola Mercogliano ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Temperature ◽

Weather Prediction ◽

Urban Climate ◽

Urban Canopy ◽

Anthropogenic Heat ◽

Climate Modelling ◽

Model Framework ◽

European Cities ◽

Cosmo Model ◽

Anthropogenic Heat Flux

<p>Nowadays, cities are the preferred location for more than half of the human population and the places where major human-perceived climate change impacts occur. In an increasingly urbanized world, it is essential to represent such areas adequately in Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models, not only to correctly forecast air temperature, but also the human heat stress and the micro-climate phenomena induced by the cities. Among them, the best known is the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, which refers to the significantly higher temperatures experienced by a metropolitan area than its rural surroundings. Currently, the COSMO model employs a zero-order urban description, which is unable to correctly reproduce the UHI effect: cities are simply represented as natural lands with increased surface roughness length and reduced vegetation cover. However, the reproduction of the urban climate features in NWP and regional climate models is possible with the use of the so-called urban canopy models, that are able to parameterize the interaction between the urbanized surface and the overlying atmosphere. In this context, a new bulk parameterization scheme, TERRA_URB (TU), has been developed within the COSMO Consortium. TU offers an intrinsic representation of urban physics: the effect of buildings, streets and other man-made layers on the surface-atmosphere interaction is described by parameterizing the impervious water balance, translating the 3D urban-canopy parameters into bulk parameters with the Semi-empirical Urban canopy parameterization (SURY) and using the externally calculated anthropogenic heat flux as additional heat source. In this work, we present high-resolution simulations with the TU scheme, for different European cities, Turin, Naples and Moscow. An in-depth evaluation and verification of the performances of the recent COSMO version with TU scheme and new implemented physical parameterizations, such the ICON-like surface-layer turbulence scheme and the new formulation of the surface temperature, have been carried out. The validation concerned the 2-meter temperature and was performed for 1- or 2-week selected periods over the 3 European cities characterized by different environment and climate, namely the Moscow megacity in Russia and Turin and Naples in Italy. Even if the three domains are morphologically different, the results follow a common behavior. In particular, the activation of TERRA_URB provides a substantial improvement in capturing the UHI intensity and improving air temperature forecasts in urban areas. Potential benefits in the model performance also arise from a new turbulence scheme and the representation of skin-layer temperature (for vegetation). Our model framework provides promising perspectives for enhancing urban climate modelling, although further investigations are needed.</p>

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Accessing the Neighbourhood: Built Environment Performance for People with Disability

Architecture_MPS ◽

10.14324/111.444.amps.2019v16i1.004 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Mary Ann Jackson

Keyword(s):

Built Environment ◽

Research Participation ◽

Well Being ◽

Human Condition ◽

Models Of Disability ◽

Macro Scale ◽

People With Disability ◽

Neighbourhood Scale ◽

Environment Performance ◽

Health And Well Being

In the face of rapid urbanisation, increasing diversity of the human condition, ageing populations, failing infrastructure, and mounting evidence that the built environment affects health and well-being, the existing built environment still fails to meet the needs of people with disability. Nevertheless, in something of a parallel universe, improving built environment ‘sustainability’ performance, via measurement, receives much contemporary attention, and analysing the built environment at micro-scale (buildings), meso-scale (neighbourhood) and macro-scale (city-wide) is undertaken from various multidisciplinary perspectives. But, although built environment performance is already measured in many ways, and community inclusion is considered essential for health and well-being, accessibility performance for people with disability, at neighbourhood scale, is rarely considered. The institutional and medical models of disability help explain the inaccessibility of the existing built environment. On the other hand, the social and human rights models of disability offer insight into improving the accessibility of the existing built environment for people with disability. However, ‘disability’ and ‘built environment’ tend not to mix. People with disability continue to experience lack of meaningful involvement in research, participation in decision-making, partnership equality, and direct influence over policy, with the built environment arena increasingly becoming a private-sector activity. The actors involved, however, have little understanding of either the accessibility needs of people with disability, or the inaccessibility, particularly at neighbourhood scale, of the existing built environment. It is in this context that this paper explores the design, planning and politics of an inaccessible built environment, concluding that assessing the built environment accessibility performance for people with disability, at neighbourhood scale, is an essential component in the process of built environment accessibility improvement. Requiring collaboration between the built environment and disability knowledge domains, a new tool measuring neighbourhood accessibility, the Universal Mobility Index (UMI), has emerged and is undergoing further development.

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Modelling spatiotemporal variations of the canopy layer urban heat island in Beijing at the neighbourhood scale

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ◽

10.5194/acp-21-13687-2021 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (17) ◽

pp. 13687-13711

Author(s):

Michael Biggart ◽

Jenny Stocker ◽

Ruth M. Doherty ◽

Oliver Wild ◽

David Carruthers ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Urban Heat Island ◽

Land Surface ◽

Urban Climate ◽

Anthropogenic Heat ◽

Heat Island ◽

Canopy Layer ◽

Near Surface ◽

Air Temperatures ◽

Urban Heat ◽

Neighbourhood Scale

Abstract. Information on the spatiotemporal characteristics of Beijing's urban–rural near-surface air temperature difference, known as the canopy layer urban heat island (UHI), is important for future urban climate management strategies. This paper investigates the variation of near-surface air temperatures within Beijing at a neighbourhood-scale resolution (∼ 100 m) during winter 2016 and summer 2017. We perform simulations using the urban climate component of the ADMS-Urban model with land surface parameters derived from both local climate zone classifications and OpenStreetMap land use information. Through sensitivity simulations, the relative impacts of surface properties and anthropogenic heat emissions on the temporal variation of Beijing's UHI are quantified. Measured UHI intensities between central Beijing (Institute of Atmospheric Physics) and a rural site (Pinggu) during the Atmospheric Pollution and Human Health in a Chinese Megacity (APHH-China) campaigns, peak during the evening at ∼ 4.5 ∘C in both seasons. In winter, the nocturnal UHI is dominated by anthropogenic heat emissions but is underestimated by the model. Higher-resolution anthropogenic heat emissions may capture the effects of local sources (e.g. residential buildings and adjacent major roads). In summer, evening UHI intensities are underestimated, especially during heatwaves. The inability to fully replicate the prolonged release of heat stored in the urban fabric may explain this. Observed negative daytime UHI intensities in summer are more successfully captured when surface moisture levels in central Beijing are increased. However, the spatial correlation between simulated air temperatures and satellite-derived land surface temperatures is stronger with a lower urban moisture scenario. This result suggests that near-surface air temperatures at the urban meteorological site are likely influenced by fine-scale green spaces that are unresolved by the available land cover data and demonstrates the expected differences between surface and air temperatures related to canopy layer advection. This study lays the foundations for future studies of heat-related health risks and UHI mitigation strategies across Beijing and other megacities.

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