Traditionally urban areas have not been resolved in numerical weather prediction models and so little attention has been given to representing such surfaces, despite the fact that most weather forecasts are used by people who live within cities. Increasing resolution for these models along with the introduction of surface tile schemes (which solve the surface energy balance equations for number of sub-gridscale surfaces within a gridbox) mean that we should now be modelling the interaction between the urban areas and the atmosphere.

In this presentation a simple scheme for representing urban areas within the Met Office Unified Model will be presented. The characteristics of the scheme will be described and the impact that this has had on operational forecasts will be discussed.

The limitations of the parametrisation will be described and possible future improvements will be presented. In addition, the problems with current observational datasets with regards to model development will be discussed, along with ways in which both communities could work together to deliver better results.