Influence of Thermal Air Pollution on the Urban Climate (Estimates Using the COSMO-CLM Model)

Abstract

It is well known that large cities and urban agglomerations not only make a decisive contribution to the growth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but also significantly shape their own climate by transforming the underlying surface of urban areas, as well as thermal, gas and aerosol pollution of the urban boundary layer of the atmosphere. The most powerful manifestation of the city’s influence on local and regional climate processes is the thermal pollution of the atmosphere created by anthropogenic heat fluxes forming primarily due to the energy consumption of the urban economy. This paper summarizes the results of the work of the authors on numerical modeling of the influence of anthropogenic heat fluxes (thermal pollution of the urban atmosphere) on the climatic characteristics of urban agglomerations using the COSMO-CLM mesoscale climate model. The work was carried out as part of the Analysis of an impact of the regional climate change on the residential and commercial energy consumption of Russian megacities project of the Russian Science Foundation.