Parameterization of the Urban Water Budget with the Submesoscale Soil Model

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents the hydrological component of the Submesoscale Soil Model, urbanized version (SM2-U). This model is an extension of the rural Interactions between Soil, Biosphere, and Atmosphere (ISBA) soil model to urban surfaces. It considers in detail both rural and urban surfaces. Its purpose is to compute the sensible heat and humidity fluxes at the canopy–atmosphere interface for the computational domain lower boundary condition of atmospheric mesoscale models in order to simulate the urban boundary layer in any weather conditions. Because it computes separately the surface temperature of each land use cover mode while the original model computes a unique temperature for the soil and vegetation system, the new version is first validated for rural grounds by comparison with experimental data from the Hydrological Atmospheric Pilot Experiment-Modélisation du Bilan Hydrique (HAPEX-MOBILHY) and the European Field Experiment in a Desertification Threatened Area (EFEDA). The SM2-U water budget is then evaluated on the experimental data obtained at a suburban site in the Nantes urban area (Rezé, France), both on an annual scale and for two stormy events. SM2-U evaluates correctly the water flow measured in the drainage network (DN) at the annual scale and for the summer storm. As for the winter storm, when the soil is saturated, the simulation shows that water infiltration from the soil to the DN must be taken care of to evaluate correctly the DN flow. Yet, the addition of this soil water infiltration to the DN does not make any difference in the simulated surface fluxes that are the model outputs for simulating the urban boundary layer. Urban hydrological parameters are shown to largely influence the available water on artificial surfaces for evaporation and to influence less the evapotranspiration from natural surfaces. The influence of the water budget and surface structure on the suburban site local climatology is demonstrated.