A numerical study of the influence of urban expansion on monthly climate in dry autumn over the Pearl River Delta, China

Abstract

In this study, we employed a regional model to simulate the impact of urban expansion on monthly climate in Pearl River Delta (PRD) region. Two experiments were performed by prescribing two different land covers in the PRD region. One land cover represents vegetation in the 1970s which is derived from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) data with 24-category (hereafter referred to as NU). The other land cover represents the current urban condition which is derived from remote sensing data acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) in 2004 (hereafter referred to as HU). Using the two land cover datasets, monthly climate of October 2004 was simulated, which was a very dry season in the PRD region. The results obtained from the numerical simulation show a distinct difference in simulated shelter-level temperature, humidity, surface fluxes and the height of planetary boundary layer (PBL) with two different land cover data sets being specified. The maximum difference in simulated monthly mean temperature over urban areas was 0.9 °C. A large temperature difference was found in urbanized area in Guangzhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan and Shenzhen. The monthly mean relative humidity in urban areas decreased by 1.4% as a result of urban expansion (from 59.2% in NU to 57.8% in HU). The maximum decrease in mixing ratio was 0.4 g/kg in Guangzhou and Dongguan, whereas the maximum decrease in relative humidity was 2.4%. There was an increase of sensible heat flux in developed lands and the maximum increase was 90 W m−2. In contrast, latent hear flux in urban area decreased and the maximum decrease was 300 W m−2. In addition, the increase in mean height of PBL ranged from 20 to 80 m (HU compared with NU), and the maximum change of the height was 180 m over urban area in city of Guangzhou.