Future Change in Wintertime Urban Heat Island in Tokyo Metropolitan Area

Tokyo metropolitan area is one of the largest urban areas all over the world. This study investigates the change in urban heat island intensity of Tokyo metropolitan area in winter season by the effects of global climate change. We performed present and future climate simulations are conducted using a regional climate model (WRF) including an urban canopy sub-model (Kusaka et al., 2001). Future climate simulation was conducted using Pseudo-Global-Warming (PGW) method (Kimura and Kitoh, 2008) assuming the boundary conditions estimated by CMIP3 GCMs under the SRES scenarios. The PGW method is one of the useful methods for future downscaling and adopted for some studies on urban heat island (Kusaka et al., 2012) and winter climate (Hara et al., 2008) over Japan. The simulation results indicated that UHII would be enhanced during night, due to the global climate change.