Abstract
Accelerating growth of urban populations, especially in developing countries, has become a driving force of human development. Crowded cities are centres of creativity and economic progress, but polluted air, flooding and other climate impacts, means they also face major weather, climate and environment-related challenges. Increasingly dense, complex and interdependent urban systems leave cities vulnerable: a single extreme event can lead to a widespread breakdown of a city's infrastructure often through domino effects. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recognizes that rapid urbanization necessitates new types of services which make the best use of science and technology and considers the challenge of delivering these as one of the main priorities for the meteorological community. Such Integrated Urban Weather, Environment and Climate Services should assist cities in facing hazards such as storm surges, flooding, heat waves, and air pollution episodes, especially in changing climates. The aim is to build urban services that meet the special needs of cities through a combination of dense observation networks, high-resolution forecasts, multi-hazard early warning systems, and climate services for reducing emissions, that will enable the building of resilient, thriving sustainable cities that promote the Sustainable Development Goals. A number of recent international studies have been initiated to explore these issues. The paper provides a brief overview of recent WMO and collaborators research programs and activities in urban hydrometeorology, climate and air pollution; describes the novel concept of urban integrated weather, climate and environment related services; and highlights research needs for their realisation.
Highlights
Over the past few hundred years humans have clustered increasingly in large settlements, to the point where the urban population exceeds the rural population
A single extreme event can through a domino of effects lead to a broad breakdown of a city's infrastructure
The objective of this paper is to provide a brief overview of recent World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and collaborators research programs and activities in urban hydrometeorology, climate and air pollution, presenting the emerging concept of urban integrated weather, climate and environment related services, and research needs for their realisation at scales both within and beyond the city
Summary
Over the past few hundred years humans have clustered increasingly in large settlements, to the point where the urban population exceeds the rural population. The objectives of the recently completed WWRP TOMACS (Tokyo Metropolitan Area Convection Study for Extreme Weather Resilient Cities, Nakatani et al, 2015), were to 1) elucidate the mechanism of local high-impact weather in urban areas (e.g., local torrential rain, flash flood, strong wind, lightning), 2) improve nowcasting and forecasting techniques of local HIW, and 3) provide high resolution weather information to end-users through social experiments. Specific objectives include: (i) promotion of cooperative international-research to improve understanding of urban weather-systems via summer thunderstorm-rainfall and winter aerosol field studies; (ii) improved high-resolution (∼1 km grid) urban weather and air quality forecast-models; (iii) enhanced urban weather forecasts for societal applications (e.g., health, energy, hydrologic, climate change, air quality, urban planning, and emergency-response management). (5) development of new skill and capacity to make best use of technologies to produce and deliver new services in complex, challenging and evolving city environments
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