Application of meso-scale atmospheric modeling to the comparison of urban processes above North-American and European cities

The Town Energy Balance (TEB) urban canopy scheme has been included for several years in the French Meso-NH atmospheric model and was recently implemented in the GEM and MC2 Canadian models. TEB has been already run for European cities. More specifically, summertime episodes have been simulated with Meso-NH for Paris (France) and are currently studied for Toulouse (France) within the framework of the Capitoul experiment. To evaluate the impact of the urban parameterization on atmospheric circulations, recent simulations were conducted with MC2 for a summertime intensive observational period (IOP) of the Joint Urban 2003 campaign (Oklahoma City, OK, US). This paper aims at comparing the modeling exercises carried out on these cities for similar meteorological situations, in order to underline the main behavior differences observed between North-American and European cities.