Evaluation of Mitigation Scenarios at Fine Scales to Reduce Baltimore Heat Island Effect

Urban heat island (UHI) effect, and heat waves have been identified as disasters threatening the future of Baltimore City. The Baltimore Office of Sustainability just released their updated version of Disaster Preparedness and Planning Project (DP3) which describes natural disaster risks and vulnerabilities and details potential plans and strategies to mitigate or eliminate their impacts. One of the potential strategies the plan proposes is the development and redevelopment in underserving communities to mitigate the impacts of flooding and heat impacts by incorporating green spaces. Here we will use the Weather Research and Forecasting Large Eddy Simulation (WRF-LES) model to evaluate the effectiveness of incorporating green spaces in Baltimore’s underserved communities, to reduce the UHI and heat wave impacts. The ability of WRF-LES for simulating UHI effect in Baltimore at very fine resolutions (150 m) is evaluated for a heat wave event between Aug 19-22, 2017. Comparisons with Landsat land surface temperature (LST) and 2-m air temperature (AT) at several ASOS and AWOS stations (e.g., at Baltimore Harbor and BWI airport) show good performance. Simulations with modified green spaces are then used to estimate the impact of these modifications on LST and AT.