Abstract
The urban microclimate is a rapidly evolving field of research gaining increasing interest from public authorities and researchers. However, studies at high-latitude cities are scarce and researchers primarily focus on summerly overheating. This study focuses on the validation process of a CFD model that applies the 3D URANS approach with the realisable k-ε turbulence model at a highly complex urban area in Trondheim, Norway (63.4° N) during autumn. The CFD model features a polyhedral grid of the urban environment, including geometrically explicitly modelled buildings and trees in the area of interest. Furthermore, solar radiation, longwave radiation exchange, heat transfer from the buildings, heat storage in the urban surface, and the thermal effects of evapotranspiration from trees and grass surfaces are considered. The CFD model is validated with experimental results from a network of five mobile and one reference weather stations in the study area, providing hourly-averaged measurements for wind speed, wind direction (only reference weather station) and air temperature for two 48-h periods from September 27–28 and October 19–20. The results show that the CFD model is well able to reproduce the measured conditions at the area of interest with a mean R2 of 0.60, 0.63, and 0.96 for wind speed, wind direction and air temperature, respectively, at the reference weather station. It will be used in future studies, including the analysis of the impact of urban microclimate on buildings’ energy performance, outdoor thermal and pedestrian wind comfort.
Highlights
Urban climatology (UC) is a much-discussed field of research, driven by ongoing global urbanisation, population growth and climate change [1,2]
UC combines a variety of different disciplines to deepen the knowledge in how to address these issues, such as meteorology, climatology, air pollution science, archi tecture, building engineering, physics, urban design, biometeorology, social sciences etc
The aim of this study is to investigate the applicability of a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model for the analysis of the MC in a complex, high-latitude urban setting during autumn
Summary
Urban climatology (UC) is a much-discussed field of research, driven by ongoing global urbanisation, population growth and climate change [1,2]. Urban areas account for around 67–76% of global energy use and between 71 and 76% of CO2 emissions from global final energy use [1]. Considering these significant shares, solutions are urgently needed to reduce the negative impact of cities on the environment while ensuring a healthy and habitable space for humans. While at the beginning of UC research, studies involving the thorough analysis of field observations dominated the methodological approaches, numerical studies gained increasing atten tion, especially during the last two decades [3,4,5]. Different scenarios and strategies can be investigated and assessed, and the variables of interest are available for every location in the computational domain and for a few measurement points
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