Assessment of the Impact and Sensitivity of Urbanization on the Climate of Kansas City Metropolitan Areas

This study develops a suite of high-resolution numerical simulations using Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to characterize the urbanization impacts on climate of the Kansas City metropolitan areas. This is first carried out by contrasting the simulated current climate of the region with a historical scenario using the land use and land cover of the region prior to widespread urbanization decades ago. A future land use and land cover scenario that assumes the likely expansion of urban area by the end of century is further designed to project climatic impacts of future urbanization in the region. The land use and land cover change induced future climate change in the region is then compared to greenhouse gas induced climate change, downscaled from global climate model projections. The effectiveness of potential cooling effects of solar reflective roofs to offset warming and mitigate urban heat island effects in the context of both urbanization and greenhouse gas induced climate change will be further evaluated and discussed.