Results and sensitivities of an urban parameterization coupled to the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) over Washington DC

This poster will present results from efforts to couple the Town Energy Balance (TEB) urban parameterization with the RAMS. Urban representation in traditional land surface schemes will not allow for the development of many of the urban boundary layer effects of an Urban Heat Island (UHI) and yet output from mesoscale models using these land surface schemes are often used to drive various urban scale models (e.g. Air quality and Dispersion) which are very sensitive to boundary layer inputs. Results will show the magnitude of effect that an urban parameterization can have on the parent model's boundary layer and also discuss some of the sensitivity issues (e.g. land surface and morphology) one needs to consider with such a coupling.