Modeling the urban circulation in the Salt Lake City area using the WRF urban canopy parameterization

Modeling atmospheric transport and dispersion (ATD) in urban areas is of interest not only for air pollution applications, but also for monitoring of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Relating greenhouse gas measurements in and near urban areas to nearby emissions requires an accurate representation of ATD. As part of a study to evaluate current modeling capabilities of urban CO2 emissions, we are performing WRF simulations of the Salt Lake City area.

We describe a series of sensitivity experiments in which different configurations of the WRF mesoscale model are used to model urban and mesoscale circulations in Salt Lake City and the surrounding terrain. The WRF configurations are chosen to compare the performance of different parameterization options for the planetary boundary layer and urban canopy. The model runs are evaluated by comparison with data collected as part of VTMX2000 and Urban2000. Results will be compared with earlier studies using the MM5, RAMS, and Eta models.