TY - GEN
T1 - Sensitivity of WRF model to urban parameterizations, with applications to Chicago metropolitan urban heat Island
AU - Sharma, Ashish
AU - Fernando, Harindra J.S.
AU - Hellmann, Jessica
AU - Chen, Fei
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2014 by ASME.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - Chicago is one of the most populated cites of US. It is located next to a freshwater source, Lake Michigan, and surrounded by productive agricultural land and diverse natural habitats. This study explores the sensitivity of mesoscale urban heat island (UHI) simulations to urban parameterizations, focusing on the Chicago metropolitan area (CMA) and its environs. For this purpose, a series of climate downscaling experiments using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model at 1 km horizontal resolution. A typical summer hot day in Chicago was considered, which is imitative of a summer day in the late 21st century. This study utilizes National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2006 classifications to test UHI sensitivity for CMA. Among different urban parameterization schemes, BEP+BEM best reproduces the urban surface temperatures in comparison to other urban schemes. Results show that UHI is more pronounced with BEP and BEP+BEM schemes due to explicit accounting of anthropogenic heat (AH). The study also investigates the effects of urbanization on regional climate by replacing Chicago metropolitan area by agricultural landscape, which yielded increased surface wind speeds due to reduced mechanical and thermal resistance.
AB - Chicago is one of the most populated cites of US. It is located next to a freshwater source, Lake Michigan, and surrounded by productive agricultural land and diverse natural habitats. This study explores the sensitivity of mesoscale urban heat island (UHI) simulations to urban parameterizations, focusing on the Chicago metropolitan area (CMA) and its environs. For this purpose, a series of climate downscaling experiments using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model at 1 km horizontal resolution. A typical summer hot day in Chicago was considered, which is imitative of a summer day in the late 21st century. This study utilizes National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2006 classifications to test UHI sensitivity for CMA. Among different urban parameterization schemes, BEP+BEM best reproduces the urban surface temperatures in comparison to other urban schemes. Results show that UHI is more pronounced with BEP and BEP+BEM schemes due to explicit accounting of anthropogenic heat (AH). The study also investigates the effects of urbanization on regional climate by replacing Chicago metropolitan area by agricultural landscape, which yielded increased surface wind speeds due to reduced mechanical and thermal resistance.
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U2 - 10.1115/FEDSM2014-21292
DO - 10.1115/FEDSM2014-21292
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84919934684
T3 - American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Fluids Engineering Division (Publication) FEDSM
BT - Symposia
PB - American Society of Mechanical Engineers(ASME)
T2 - ASME 2014 4th Joint US-European Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting, FEDSM 2014, Collocated with the ASME 2014 12th International Conference on Nanochannels, Microchannels, and Minichannels
Y2 - 3 August 2014 through 7 August 2014
ER -