Use of an Energy Balance Model for Studying Urban Surface Temperature at Microscale

Abstract

Urban surface temperature is a major diagnostic parameter to describe the urban environment in cross-scale urban climatic studies. Modeling of urban surface temperature at microscale is fundamental to advances in understanding the nature of urban microclimate, and it is essential for diverse studies related to urban pollution dispersion, pedestrian thermal comfort and building energy consumption. This paper focuses on the use of an urban canopy model (Town Energy Balance model, TEB) to study urban surface energy balance and surface temperature evolution. TEB is run in an offline mode with atmospheric forcing data from continuous observation above the canopy layer of Toulouse city center, France from February 2004 to February 2005. The surface temperatures derived from TEB present both the correct temporal course and diurnal amplitude. Simulation results show different patterns exist between urban roof, wall, and road assemble-averaged estimates in diurnal and annual temperature cycles. The time lag phenomenon and amplitude attenuation between surface temperature cycle and canyon air temperature cycle indicate that TEB can reproduce the urban thermal responses and the temporal evolution of diagnostic parameters in urban microclimate studies. TEB and other microclimate model have the potential to be important tools for the deterministic analysis of urban microclimate and hence for the analysis of adaptation measures in mitigating UHI for urban design.