Abstract
Surface wind directly affects human life, wind energy utilization, the atmospheric environment, and many other aspects. The Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA) megalopolis is experiencing an accelerated progress of urbanization, which may result in the change in surface roughness and atmospheric characteristics. In this study, urbanization effects on surface wind speed (SWS) in the GBA megalopolis, particularly Zhuhai, is investigated by using long-term automatic meteorological measurements, ERA5 reanalysis, and nighttime light data. Results of the analysis show that the averaged SWS has decreased significantly at a rate of −0.53 m s−1 per decade over the past decades. With the help of observation-minus-reanalysis (OMR) method, which excludes the atmospheric circulation effects, we found that the decrease in SWS is mainly contributed by the increase in surface roughness, which may account for as much as 75.5% of the decrease. In other words, it is the rapid development of urbanization, rather than the change in large-scale circulation, that could be mainly responsible for the decrease over the GBA in the context of the increasing global SWS since 2010. In addition, a fan-sector method is established to quantitatively analyze the correspondences between urbanization and roughness changes. It is shown that the decrease in wind speed due to surface roughness change is significantly related to the increase in the nighttime light index (NLI) averaged over the 3 km upstream fan-sectors. Moreover, their correlation reaches to 0.36 (negative) when only accounting for the samples of NLI greater than 10. In general, the fan-sector method offers an additional option for assessing the urbanization effects on SWS.
Highlights
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.As a representative feature of atmospheric circulation, surface wind has a crucial impact on human health, the atmospheric environment, wind energy utilization, and many other aspects
Based on the analysis of the observational data, we found that the surface wind speed (SWS) decreased at the rate of −0.53 m s−1 per decade, and the roughness change could account for as much as 75.5% of the decreased via the OMR method
It is shown that when the upstream distance is set to 3 km, the correlation between OMR and the upstream fan-averaged nighttime light index (NLI)
Summary
As a representative feature of atmospheric circulation, surface wind has a crucial impact on human health, the atmospheric environment, wind energy utilization, and many other aspects. Boundary wind conditions are closely related to pollutant dispersion [1] and outdoor human comfort [2] in urban areas. Wind erosion is mainly responsible for widespread desertification and land degradation in arid and semi-arid regions of northern China [3].
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