Modeling Urban Weather and Beyond (Invited Presentation)

Widely recognized as a pioneer in modeling urban weather, Bornstein (1975, JAM) built a 2-Durban boundary layer model (URBMET). Despite the simplicity of the model, it was capable of reproducing many observed features of the urban boundary layer. Since then significant progress has been made regarding 3-D modeling urban meteorology. This paper intends to provide a brief review of various modeling efforts in weather and climate models. Furthermore, it describes the details in modeling cities in the community Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model, which employs three urban parameterization schemes ranging from a simple bulk model to a sophisticated multi-layer urban canopy model. This paper addresses pressing challenges in specifying a vast number of parameters in urban modeling and in coupling to fine-scale Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) and Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) models for Transport and Dispersion (T&D) applications. To satisfy increasing community demand for integrated modeling and assessment tool, new urban modeling tools need to be established to explore, beyond predicting urban weather, emerging issues related to public health, and adaptation and mitigation under changing climate.