Further Development of the Vegetated Urban Canopy Model Including a Grass-Covered Surface Parametrization and Photosynthesis Effects

The vegetated urban canopy model (VUCM), which includes parametrizations of urban physical processes for artificial surfaces and vegetated areas in an integrated system, has been further developed by including physical processes associated with grass-covered surfaces in urban pervious surfaces and the photosynthesis effects of urban vegetation. Using measurements made from three urban/suburban sites during the BUBBLE field campaign in 2002, the model’s performance in modelling surface fluxes (momentum flux, net radiation, sensible and latent heat fluxes and storage heat flux) and canopy air conditions (canopy air temperature and specific humidity) was critically evaluated for the non-precipitation and the precipitation days. The observed surface fluxes at the urban/suburban sites were significantly altered by precipitation as well as urban vegetation. Especially, the storage heat at urban surfaces and underlying substrates varied drastically depending on weather conditions while having an important role in the formation of a nocturnal urban surface layer. Unlike the nighttime canopy air temperature that was largely affected by the storage-heat release, the daytime canopy air conditions were highly influenced by the vertical turbulent exchange with the overlying atmosphere. The VUCM well reproduced these observed features in surface fluxes and canopy air conditions at all sites while performing well for both the non-precipitation and the precipitation days. The newly implemented parametrizations clearly improved the model’s performance in the simulation of sensible and latent heat fluxes at the sites, more noticeably at the suburban site where the vegetated area fraction is the largest among the sites. Sensitivity analyses for model input parameters in VUCM elucidated the relative importance of the morphological, aerodynamic, hydrological and radiative/thermal properties in modelling urban surface fluxes and canopy air conditions for daytime and nighttime periods. These results suggest that the VUCM has great potential for urban atmospheric numerical modelling for a range of cities and weather conditions in addition to having a better physical basis in the representation of urban vegetated areas and associated physical processes.     

A Multi-layer Radiation Model for Urban Neighbourhoods with Trees

A neighbourhood-scale multi-layer urban canopy model of shortwave and longwave radiation exchange that explicitly includes the radiative effects of tall vegetation (trees) is presented. Tree foliage is permitted both between and above buildings, and mutual shading, emission and reflection between buildings and trees are included. The basic geometry is a two-dimensional canyon with leaf area density profiles and probabilistic variation of building height. Furthermore, the model accounts for three-dimensional path lengths through the foliage. Ray tracing determines the receipt of direct shortwave irradiance by building and foliage elements. View factors for longwave and shortwave diffuse radiation exchange are computed once at the start of the simulation using a Monte Carlo ray tracing approach; for subsequent model timesteps, matrix inversion rapidly solves infinite reflections and interception of emitted longwave between all elements. The model is designed to simulate any combination of shortwave and longwave radiation frequency bands, and to be portable to any neighbourhood-scale urban canopy geometry based on the urban canyon. Additionally, the model is sufficiently flexible to represent forest and forest-clearing scenarios. Model sensitivity tests demonstrate the model is robust and computationally feasible, and highlight the importance of vertical resolution to the performance of urban canopy radiation models. Full model evaluation is limited by the paucity of within-canyon radiation measurements in urban neighbourhoods with trees. Where appropriate model components are tested against analytic relations and results from an independent urban radiation transfer model. Furthermore, system response tests demonstrate the ability of the model to realistically distribute shortwave radiation among urban elements as a function of built form, solar angle and tree foliage height, density and clumping. Separate modelling of photosynthetically-active and near-infrared shortwave bands is shown to be important in some cases. Increased canyon height-to-width ratio and/or tree cover diminishes the net longwave radiation loss of individual canyon elements (e.g., floor, walls), but, notably, has little effect on the net longwave loss of the whole urban canopy. When combined with parametrizations for the impacts of trees on airflow and hydrological processes in the urban surface layer, the new radiation model extends the applicability of urban canopy models and permits more robust assessment of trees as tools to manage urban climate, air quality, human comfort and building energy loads.     

Simulating Australian Urban Climate in a Mesoscale Atmospheric Numerical Model

We develop an urban canopy scheme coupled to a mesoscale atmospheric numerical model and evaluate the simulated climate of an Australian city. The urban canopy scheme is based on the Town Energy Budget approach, but is modified to efficiently represent the predominately suburban component of Australian cities in regional climate simulations. Energy conservation is improved by adding a simple model of air-conditioning to prevent the urban parametrization acting as an energy sink during the Australian summer. In-canyon vegetation for suburban areas is represented by a big-leaf model, but with a largely reduced set of prognostic variables compared to previous approaches. Although we have used a recirculation/venting based parametrization of in-canyon turbulent heat fluxes that employs two canyon wall energy budgets, we avoid using a fixed canyon orientation by averaging the canyon fluxes after integrating over 180° of possible canyon orientations. The urban canopy scheme is evaluated by simulating the climate for Melbourne, Australia after coupling it to The Air Pollution Model. The combined system was found to predict a realistic climatology of air temperatures and winds when compared with observations from Environmental Protection Authority monitoring stations. The model also produced a plausible partitioning of the urban energy budget when compared to urban flux-tower studies. Overall, the urban canyon parametrization appears to have reasonable potential for studying present and predicting changes in future Australian urban climates in regional climate simulations.     

Relative influence of vegetation on urban energy budgets and surface temperatures

Two deterministic models were combined: one for canopy leaf energy budgets and one for street canyon energy budgets. The effects of street parks and roof gardens in contrast to non-vegetated city blocks were examined by the use of four typical urban morphologies, which were exposed latitudinally to summer and winter simulations. A variety of increases and decreases in shortwave radiation, net radiation, sensible heat flux, and system reradiation resulted. These changes appear to represent the generalized limits of the possible responses to the addition of vegetation to non-vegetated city blocks.     

Upward longwave radiation from a non-black urban canopy

The longwave upward radiation was calculated for an urban canopy by using a Monte Carlo model. The effects of the urban geometry were examined in terms of the fractional roof area, the height of the buildings and the emissivity. The urban canopy consists of identically sized buildings and the ground surfaces. The model allows for the temperature differences between the buildings and the ground surface and for multiple reflections in the canyon.The Monte Carlo results show that neglect of the geometric effects causes significant errors in calculated upward radiation: calculations with area-weighting of the radiation emitted from flat homogeneous surfaces are not appropriate. The upward flux is a nonlinear function of the fractional roof area, which may be approximated by a function of the square or cube of the fractional roof area. Neglect of the reflections by non-black surfaces (emissivity<1) underestimates the upward flux by a few percent for a canopy of emissivity=0.9. Radiation effects due to multiple reflections in the canyon are parameterized by use of the view factor and the fractional roof area. The parameterization scheme yields accurate results.     

Utility of Radiometric–aerodynamic Temperature Relations for Heat Flux Estimation

In many land-surface models using bulk transfer (one-source) approaches, the application of radiometric surface temperature observations in energy flux computations has given mixed results. This is due in part to the non-unique relationship between the so-called aerodynamic temperature, which relates to the efficiency of heat exchange between the land surface and overlying atmosphere, and a surface temperature measurement from a thermal-infrared radiometer, which largely corresponds to a weighted soil and canopy temperature as a function of radiometer viewing angle. A number of studies over the past several years using multi-source canopy models and/or experimental data have developed simplified methods to accommodate radiometric–aerodynamic temperature differences in one-source approaches. A recent investigation related the variability in the radiometric–aerodynamic relation to solar radiation using experimental data from a variety of landscapes, while another used a multi-source canopy model combined with measurements over a wide range in vegetation density to derive a relationship based on leaf area index. In this study, simulations by a detailed multi-source soil–plant–environment model, Cupid, which considers both radiative and turbulent exchanges across the soil–canopy–air interface, are used to explore the radiometric–aerodynamic temperature relations for a semi-arid shrubland ecosystem under a range of leaf area/canopy cover, soil moisture and meteorological conditions. The simulated radiometric-aerodynamic temperatures indicate that, while solar radiation and leaf area both strongly affect the magnitude of this temperature difference, the relationships are non-unique, having significant variability depending on local conditions. These simulations also show that soil–canopy temperature differences are highly correlated with variations in the radiometric–aerodynamic temperature differences, with the slope being primarily a function of leaf area. This result suggests that two-source schemes with reliable estimates of component soil and canopy temperatures and associated resistances may be better able to accommodate variability in the radiometric–aerodynamic relation for a wider range in vegetated canopy cover conditions than is possible with one-source schemes. However, comparisons of sensible heat flux estimates with Cupid using a simplified two-source model and a one-source model accommodating variability in the radiometric-aerodynamic relation based on vegetation density gave similar scatter. On the other hand, with experimental data from the shrubland site, the two-source model generally outperformed the one-source scheme. Clearly, vegetation density/leaf area has a major effect on the radiometric–aerodynamic temperature relation and must be considered in either one-source or two-source formulations. Hence these adjusted one-source models require similar inputs as in two-source approaches, but provide as output only bulk heat fluxes; this is not as useful for monitoring vegetation conditions.     

Evaluation of the Urban Tile in MOSES using Surface Energy Balance Observations

The UK Met Office has introduced a new scheme for its urban tile in MOSES 2.2 (Met Office Surface Exchange Scheme version 2.2), which is currently implemented within the operational Met Office weather forecasting model. Here, the performance of the urban tile is evaluated in two urban areas: the historic core of downtown Mexico City and a light industrial site in Vancouver, Canada. The sites differ in terms of building structures and mean building heights. In both cases vegetation cover is less than 5%. The evaluation is based on surface energy balance flux measurements conducted at approximately the blending height, which is the location where the surface scheme passes flux data into the atmospheric model. At both sites, MOSES 2.2 correctly simulates the net radiation, but there are discrepancies in the partitioning of turbulent and storage heat fluxes between predicted and observed values. Of the turbulent fluxes, latent heat fluxes were underpredicted by about one order of magnitude. Multiple model runs revealed MOSES 2.2 to be sensitive to changes in the canopy heat storage and in the ratio between the aerodynamic roughness length and that for heat transfer (temperature). Model performance was optimum with heat capacity values smaller than those generally considered for these sites. The results suggest that the current scheme is probably too simple, and that improvements may be obtained by increasing the complexity of the model.     

Intercomparison of three urban climate models

An intercomparison of the surface energy budgets from three urban climate models was made to assess the comparability of results, and to evaluate the surface energy fluxes from each model. The three models selected spanned the continuum of approaches currently employed in the treatment of the effects of urban geometry. The first model was an urban canopy-layer model which explicitly examined urban canyon geometry. The second model treated the city as a warm, rough, moist plate but included greatly simplified parameterizations of urban geometry. Neither model included a dynamic link to the urban boundary-layer. The third model was a one-dimensional urban boundary-layer model which utilized a simple warm, rough, moist plate approach but included a dynamic coupling of the urban surface layer to the urban boundary-layer.Results showed considerable disagreement between the three models in regards to the individual energy fluxes. Average rankings of the energy fluxes in terms of comparability from high-to-low similarity were: (1) solar radiation, (2) sensible heat flux, (3) conduction, (4) latent heat flux, (5) longwave re-radiation, and (6) longwave radiation input. In general, the urban canopy-layer model provided more realistic results, although each model demonstrated strong and weak points. Results indicate that current urban boundary-layer models may produce surface energy budgets with lower sensible heat fluxes and substantially higher latent heat fluxes than is supported by field evidence from the literature.     

Scalar fluxes from urban street canyons. Part I: Laboratory simulation

Flow over urban surfaces depends on surface morphology and interaction with the boundary layer above. However, the effect of the flow on scalar fluxes is hard to quantify. The naphthalene sublimation technique was used to quantify scalar vertical fluxes out of a street canyon under neutral conditions. For an array of eight canyons with aspect ratio H/W=0.75 (here, H is building height and W is the street width), increased flux was observed in the first two or three canyons for moderate and low roughness upstream. This is consistent with predictions of the length scale for initial adjustment of flow to an urban canopy. The flux was constant after the initial adjustment region and thus dependent only on local geometry. For a street canyon in the equilibrium part of the array, each facet of the street canyon was coated with naphthalene to simulate scalar release from street, walls and roof, to evaluate the effect of street canyon geometry on fluxes for H/W=0.25, 0.6, 1 and 2. Fluxes from the roof and downstream wall were considerably larger than fluxes from the street and upstream wall, and only the flux from the downstream wall exhibited a simple decrease with H/W. For each H/W there was a monotonic decrease between downstream wall, street and upstream wall transfer. This suggests that flow decelerates around the recirculation region in the lee of the upstream building, i.e. a recirculating jet rather than a symmetrical vortex. The addition of a second source within the street canyon resulted in reduced fluxes from each facet for H/W>0.25, due to increased concentration of naphthalene in the canyon air.     

Precipitation projections under GCMs perspective and Turkish Water Foundation (TWF) statistical downscaling model procedures

Insect outbreaks are major disturbances that affect a land area similar to that of forest fires across North America. The recent mountain pine bark beetle (D endroctonus ponderosae) outbreak and its associated blue stain fungi (Grosmannia clavigera) are impacting water partitioning processes of forests in the Rocky Mountain region as the spatially heterogeneous disturbance spreads across the landscape. Water cycling may dramatically change due to increasing spatial heterogeneity from uneven mortality. Water and energy storage within trees and soils may also decrease, due to hydraulic failure and mortality caused by blue stain fungi followed by shifts in the water budget. This forest disturbance was unique in comparison to fire or timber harvesting because water fluxes were altered before significant structural change occurred to the canopy. We investigated the impacts of bark beetles on lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) stand and ecosystem level hydrologic processes and the resulting vertical and horizontal spatial variability in energy storage. Bark beetle-impacted stands had on average 57 % higher soil moisture, 1.5 °C higher soil temperature, and 0.8 °C higher tree bole temperature over four growing seasons compared to unimpacted stands. Seasonal latent heat flux was highly correlated with soil moisture. Thus, high mortality levels led to an increase in ecosystem level Bowen ratio as sensible heat fluxes increased yearly and latent heat fluxes varied with soil moisture levels. Decline in canopy biomass (leaf, stem, and branch) was not seen, but ground-to-atmosphere longwave radiation flux increased, as the ground surface was a larger component of the longwave radiation. Variability in soil, latent, and sensible heat flux and radiation measurements increased during the disturbance. Accounting for stand level variability in water and energy fluxes will provide a method to quantify potential drivers of ecosystem processes and services as well as lead to greater confidence in measurements for all dynamic disturbances.     

A lagrangian random-walk model for simulating water vapor,CO2 and sensible heat flux densities and scalar profiles over and within a soybean canopy

An integrated canopy micrometeorological model is described for calculating CO₂, water vapor and sensible heat exchange rates and scalar concentration profiles over and within a crop canopy. The integrated model employs a Lagrangian random walk algorithm to calculate turbulent diffusion. The integrated model extends previous Lagrangian modelling efforts by employing biochemical, physiological and micrometeorological principles to evaluate vegetative sources and sinks. Model simulations of water vapor, CO₂ and sensible heat flux densities are tested against measurements made over a soybean canopy, while calculations of scalar profiles are tested against measurements made above and within the canopy. The model simulates energy and mass fluxes and scalar profiles above the canopy successfully. On the other hand, model calculations of scalar profiles inside the canopy do not match measurements.The tested Lagrangian model is also used to evaluate simpler modelling schemes, as needed for regional and global applications. Simple, half-order closure modelling schemes (which assume a constant scalar profile in the canopy) do not yield large errors in the computation of latent heat (LE) and CO₂ (F _c ) flux densities. Small errors occur because the source-sink formulation of LE andF _c are relatively insensitive to changes in scalar concentrations and the scalar gradients are small. On the other hand, complicated modelling frames may be needed to calculate sensible heat flux densities; the source-sink formulation of sensible heat is closely coupled to the within-canopy air temperature profile.     

植被覆盖异常变化影响陆面状况的数值模拟

利用NCAR最新的公用陆面模式CLM3．0，通过数值模拟初步研究了植被叶面积指数（LAI，leafareaindex）异常变化对陆面状况的可能影响，结果表明，植被LAI的异常变化能够引起地表能量平衡、地表水循环等陆面状况的异常。（1）植被LAI的异常变化主要影响太阳辐射在植被与地表之间的分配，以及地表的感热、潜热通量。植被LAI增大，能够引起植被吸收的太阳辐射增加，而到达土壤表面的太阳辐射减小，并导致植被的蒸发、蒸腾潜热通量增加，造成地表的蒸发潜热和感热通量不同程度的减小。（2）植被LAI增大时，植被对降水的拦截和植被叶面的蒸发增大，植被的蒸腾作用也明显增强；植被LAI增加会使得热带地区各个季节的土壤表面蒸发、地表径流减小，而土壤湿度有所增加；LAI增加造成中高纬度地区土壤蒸发的减少主要出现在夏季；LAI增加还能够引起中高纬地区冬、春积雪深度不同程度的增加，造成春末、夏初地表径流的增加。（3）植被LAI增加能够使得叶面和土壤温度有所下降，但植被LAI的变化对叶面、土壤温度的影响相对较小。     

Influence of leaf water potential on diurnal changes in CO2 and water vapour fluxes

Mass and energy fluxes between the atmosphere and vegetation are driven by meteorological variables, and controlled by plant water status, which may change more markedly diurnally than soil water. We tested the hypothesis that integration of dynamic changes in leaf water potential may improve the simulation of CO₂ and water fluxes over a wheat canopy. Simulation of leaf water potential was integrated into a comprehensive model (the ChinaAgrosys) of heat, water and CO₂ fluxes and crop growth. Photosynthesis from individual leaves was integrated to the canopy by taking into consideration the attenuation of radiation when penetrating the canopy. Transpiration was calculated with the Shuttleworth-Wallace model in which canopy resistance was taken as a link between energy balance and physiological regulation. A revised version of the Ball-Woodrow-Berry stomatal model was applied to produce a new canopy resistance model, which was validated against measured CO₂ and water vapour fluxes over winter wheat fields in Yucheng (36°57′ N, 116°36′ E, 28 m above sea level) in the North China Plain during 1997, 2001 and 2004. Leaf water potential played an important role in causing stomatal conductance to fall at midday, which caused diurnal changes in photosynthesis and transpiration. Changes in soil water potential were less important. Inclusion of the dynamics of leaf water potential can improve the precision of the simulation of CO₂ and water vapour fluxes, especially in the afternoon under water stress conditions.     

Modelling of the OASIS Energy Flux Measurements Using Two Canopy Concepts

Two land surface schemes, SCAM and CSIRO9, were used to model the measured energy fluxes during the OASIS (Observations At Several Interacting Scales) field program. The measurements were taken at six sites along a 100 km rainfall gradient. Two types of simulations were conducted: (1) offline simulations forced with measured atmospheric input data at each of the six sites, and (2) regional simulations with the two land surface schemes coupled to the regional climate model DARLAM.The two land surface schemes employ two different canopy modelling concepts: in SCAM the vegetation is conceptually above the ground surface, while CSIRO9 employs the more commonly used `horizontally tiled' approach in which the vegetation cover is modelled by conceptually placing it beside bare ground. Both schemes utilize the same below-ground components (soil hydrological and thermal models) to reduce the comparison to canopy processes only. However, the ground heat flux, soil evaporation and evapotranspiration are parameterised by the two canopy treatments somewhat differently.Both canopy concepts reproduce the measured energy fluxes. SCAM has a slightly higher root-mean standard error in the model-measurement comparison for the ground heat flux. The mean surface radiative temperature simulated by SCAM is approximately 1K lower than in the CSIRO9 simulations. However, the soil and vegetation temperatures (which contribute to the radiative temperature) varied more in the CSIRO9 simulations. These larger variations are due to the absence of a representation of the aerodynamic interactions between vegetation and ground.     

Local boundary-layer development over burnt and unburnt tropical savanna: an observational study

Fire scars have the ability to radically alter the surface energy budget within a tropical savanna by reducing surface albedo, increasing available energy for partitioning into sensible and latent heat fluxes and increasing substrate heat flux. These changes have the potential to alter boundary-layer conditions and ultimately feedback to local and regional climate. We measured radiative and energy fluxes over burnt and unburnt tropical savanna near Howard Springs, Darwin, Australia. At the burnt site a low to moderate intensity fire, ranging between 1,000 and 3,500 kW m⁻¹, initially affected the land surface by removing all understorey vegetation, charring and blackening the ground surface, scorching the overstorey canopy and reducing the albedo. A reduction in latent heat fluxes to almost zero was seen immediately after the fire when the canopy was scorched. This was then followed by an increase in the sensible heat flux and a large increase in the ground heat flux over the burnt surface. Tethered balloon measurements showed that, despite the presence of pre-monsoonal rain events occurring during the measurement period, the lower boundary layer over the burnt site was up to 2^°C warmer than that over the unburnt site. This increase in boundary-layer heating when applied to fire scars at the landscape scale can have the ability to form or alter local mesoscale circulations and ultimately create a feedback to regional heating and precipitation patterns that may affect larger-scale processes such as the Australian monsoon.     

高温和台风影响下的苏州城市粗糙子层湍流通量特征

利用苏州地区2011年12月20日—2012年8月13日的湍流观测资料对不同季节、高温、台风强天气过程下的湍流特征进行分析。结果表明:城市地区不同季节动量通量、感热通量、潜热通量日变化明显,各通量的夏季平均值、最大值均高于冬春季,夏季感热通量日最大值为160.2 W·m^-2,感热在城市地表能量平衡中的作用大于潜热,各季节潜热通量平均值仅为感热通量的40%~45%。降水量和植被覆盖度影响地表能量平衡,尤其影响地表热量在感热和潜热之间的分配。在高温天气过程中,感热通量增加明显,其峰值约是夏季平均的1.93倍。由于水汽较少,潜热通量明显减少,约为夏季日平均值的60%。速度三分量谱中u谱与w谱在低频区存在两个峰值,说明在城市复杂下垫面里,湍流激发机制中存在低频过程的影响。在台风天气过程中,动量通量大且变化快,感热输送弱,潜热输送波动大。速度谱w基本不符合"-5/3"次律,惯性子区最小且向高频移动,这和台风内部的复杂上升下沉气流有关。     

The Simulation of the Opposing Fluxes of Latent Heat and CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> over Various Land-Use Types: Coupling a Gas Exchange Model to a Mesoscale Atmospheric Model

A mesoscale meteorological model (FOOT3DK) is coupled with a gas exchange model to simulate surface fluxes of CO₂ and H₂O under field conditions. The gas exchange model consists of a C3 single leaf photosynthesis sub-model and an extended big leaf (sun/shade) sub-model that divides the canopy into sunlit and shaded fractions. Simulated CO₂ fluxes of the stand-alone version of the gas exchange model correspond well to eddy-covariance measurements at a test site in a rural area in the west of Germany. The coupled FOOT3DK/gas exchange model is validated for the diurnal cycle at singular grid points, and delivers realistic fluxes with respect to their order of magnitude and to the general daily course. Compared to the Jarvis-based big leaf scheme, simulations of latent heat fluxes with a photosynthesis-based scheme for stomatal conductance are more realistic. As expected, flux averages are strongly influenced by the underlying land cover. While the simulated net ecosystem exchange is highly correlated with leaf area index, this correlation is much weaker for the latent heat flux. Photosynthetic CO₂ uptake is associated with transpirational water loss via the stomata, and the resulting opposing surface fluxes of CO₂ and H₂O are reproduced with the model approach. Over vegetated surfaces it is shown that the coupling of a photosynthesis-based gas exchange model with the land-surface scheme of a mesoscale model results in more realistic simulated latent heat fluxes.     

Spatially explicit surface energy budget and partitioning with remote sensing and flux measurements in a boreal region of Interior Alaska

Extrapolating energy fluxes between the ground surface and the atmospheric boundary layer from point-based measurements to spatially explicit landscape estimation is critical to understand and quantify the energy balance components and exchanges in the hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. This information is difficult to quantify and are often lacking. Using a Landsat image (acquired on 5 August 2004), the flux measurements from three eddy covariance flux towers (a 1987 burn, a 1999 burn, and an unburned control site) and a customized satellite-based surface energy balance model of Mapping Evapotranspiration at High Resolution with Internalized Calibration (METRIC), we estimated net radiation, sensible heat flux (H), latent heat flux (LE), and soil heat flux (G) for the boreal Yukon River Basin of Interior Alaska. The model requires user selection of two extreme conditions present within the image area to calibrate and anchor the sensible flux output. One is the “hot” condition which refers to a bare soil condition with specified residual evaporation rates. Another one is the “cold” condition which refers to a fully transpiring vegetation such as full-cover agricultural crops. We selected one bare field as the “hot” condition while we explored three different scenarios for the “cold” pixel because of the absence of larger expanses of agricultural fields within the image area. For this application over boreal forest, selecting agricultural fields whose evapotranspiration was assumed to be 1.05 times the alfalfa-based reference evapotranspiration as the “cold” pixel could result in large errors. Selecting an unburned flux tower site as the “cold” pixel could achieve acceptable results, but uncertainties remain about the energy balance closure of the flux towers. We found that METRIC performs reasonably well in partitioning energy fluxes in a boreal landscape.     

Intelligent urban forms (IUF) a new climate-concerned,urban planning strategy

Summary Adaptive geometrical configurations are presented, which aim to create intelligent urban forms, and which include screening methods applicable to the linear- and grid-type building layouts. They are especially suitable for mid-latitude cities characterized by seasonally swinging climates which necessitate heating in winter and cooling in summer. The screens are envisaged as shading devices in the summer blocking the incoming solar radiation during day-time (that is, on-position), while being removed at night to enhance nocturnal radiative cooling (that is, off-position). In winter they are assumed to be in off-position during sunshine hours to promote the access of solar radiation and in on-position at night to obstruct the sky energy sink and reduce radiant heat losses. Their implications for the urban street canyon climate and the thermal performance of the built environment are simulated using the cluster thermal time constant (CTTC) model. The diurnal variation of both the ambient air temperature and net radiant flux within the urban canopy layer serve as criteria by which the climatetempering effectiveness of the screens is assessed.With 9 Figures     

A Physically-Based Scheme For The Urban Energy Budget In Atmospheric Models

An urban surface scheme for atmospheric mesoscale models ispresented. A generalization of local canyon geometry isdefined instead of the usual bare soil formulation currently usedto represent cities in atmospheric models. This allows refinement ofthe radiative budgets as well as momentum, turbulent heat and ground fluxes.The scheme is aimed to be as general as possible, in order to representany city in the world, for any time or weather condition(heat island cooling by night, urban wake, water evaporation after rainfalland snow effects).Two main parts of the scheme are validated against published data.Firstly, it is shown that the evolution of the model-predictedfluxes during a night with calm winds is satisfactory, considering both the longwave budget and the surface temperatures. Secondly, the original shortwave scheme is tested off-line and compared to the effective albedoof a canyon scale model. These two validations show that the radiative energy input to the urban surface model is realistic.Sensitivity tests of the model are performed for one-yearsimulation periods, for both oceanic and continental climates. The scheme has the ability to retrieve, without ad hoc assumptions, the diurnal hysteresis between the turbulent heat flux and ground heat flux. It reproduces the damping of the daytime turbulent heat flux by the heat storage flux observed in city centres. The latent heat flux is negligible on average,but can be large when short time scales are considered (especially afterrainfall). It also suggests that in densely built areas, domesticheating can overwhelm the net radiation, and supply a continuous turbulentheat flux towards the atmosphere. This becomes very important inwinter for continental climates. Finally, a comparison with a vegetation scheme shows that the suburban environment can be represented with a bare soil formulation for large temporal or spatial averages (typical of globalclimatic studies), but that a surface scheme dedicated to the urban surface is necessary when smaller scales are considered: town meteorological forecasts, mesoscale or local studies.