Abstract
During the simulation of the urban heat island phenomenon, the accurate representation of urban geometry in numerical models is crucial. In this study, the local climate zone (LCZ) system was incorporated into the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model in order to facilitate proper land surface information for the model integrations. After the calculation of necessary input canopy parameters, based on local static datasets, simulations were performed to test the model’s performance in predicting near-surface air temperature (Ta) and urban heat island intensity (ΔT) under a heatwave period in July 2017. The modelled values were evaluated against the observations of the local urban climate monitoring system. The results suggest that WRF with a single-layer canopy scheme and the LCZ-based static database was able to capture the spatiotemporal variation of the aforementioned variables reasonably well. The daytime Ta was generally overestimated in each LCZ. At nights, slight overestimations (underestimations) occurred in LCZ 6, LCZ 9, and LCZ D (LCZ 2 and LCZ 5). The mean ΔT was underestimated in the night-time; however, the daytime ΔT was estimated accurately. The mean maxima (minima) of ΔT were underestimated (overestimated) with around 1.5–2 °C, particularly in LCZ 2 and LCZ 5. Some components of the surface energy budget were also computed to shed light on the inter-LCZ differences of Ta. It was concluded that the nocturnal ground heat flux was about five times higher in urban LCZs than in the rural LCZ D, which resulted in a reduced cooling potential over the urbanized areas.
Highlights
An increasing trend in the number and population of urban areas is predicted in the forthcoming decades (UN 2014)
In order to evaluate the ability of our Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)-single-layer urban canopy model (SLUCM)-local climate zone (LCZ) system over the study area under an ideal synoptic condition, the hourly means of modelled near-surface air temperature were compared with the observations of the local urban climate monitoring system (UCMS)
It can be concluded that WRF-SLUCM with the modified LCZ land use classification was able to simulate the spatiotemporal variation of Ta reasonably well
Summary
An increasing trend in the number and population of urban areas is predicted in the forthcoming decades (UN 2014). It was concluded that WRF with LCZ-based land use classification was capable to estimate the inter-LCZ temperature variability They found that for those grids that were surrounded by grids with same LULC classes, LCZ 2 (LCZ 8) had the highest, while LCZ 6 (LCZ 2) had the lowest DTR in summer (winter). We aimed (i) to incorporate a Szegedspecified LCZ land use (Lelovics et al 2014) and urban canopy parameter database into the model to give a better representation of artificial surface coverage; (ii) to predict the spatiotemporal variability of near-surface air temperature and energy budget components under a 6-day heatwave period between July 18 and 24, 2017, characterized by low synoptic wind and daily maximum temperatures around 35 °C; (iii) and to evaluate our WRF-SLUCM-LCZ scheme against the measurements of the local urban climate monitoring system
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