Diurnal and Seasonal Evolution of the Urban Boundary Layer in Augusta, Georgia

Urban heat island (UHI) effects are defined by elevated temperatures forced by increased heat storage by artificial surfaces. While UHI effects are often described at the surface, there are also vertically spanning UHI enhancements throughout the planetary boundary layer, referred to as the urban boundary layer (UBL). UBLs have been well-studied through numerical modeling in large cities, but less so in moderately-sized cities such as Augusta, Georgia. We use Weather Research & Forecasting (WRF) simulations initialized with a selection of different land-surface urban parameterizations to determine how the diurnal evolution of Augusta’s local and downwind mesoscale UBL circulations are altered between two seasonal regimes – winter and summer. Additionally, our simulations’ depictions of the near-surface UHI effects are verified with weather stations within the Augusta region.