The multi-scale numerical modeling system for research on the relationship between urban planning and meteorological environment

Considering the urban characteristics, a customized multi-scale numerical modeling system is established to simulate the urban meteorological environment.THE system mainly involves three spatial scales;the urban scale, urban sub-domain scale, and single to few buildings scale. In it, different underlying surface types are employed, the building drag factor is used to replace its roughness in the influence on the urban wind field, the effects of building distribution, azimuth and screening of shortwave radiation are added, and the influence of anthropogenic heating is also taken into account. All the numerical tests indicate that the simulated results are reasonably in agreement with the observational data, so the system can be used to simulate the urban meteorological environment. Making use of it, the characteristics of the meteorological environment from the urban to urban sub-domain scales, even the among-buildings scale,can be recognized. As long as the urban planning scheme is given, the corresponding simulated results can be obtained so as to meet the need of optimizing urban planning.     

Evaluation of a micro-scale wind model’s performance over realistic building clusters using wind tunnel experiments

The simulation performance over complex building clusters of a wind simulation model(Wind Information Field Fast Analysis model, WIFFA) in a micro-scale air pollutant dispersion model system(Urban Microscale Air Pollution dispersion Simulation model, UMAPS) is evaluated using various wind tunnel experimental data including the CEDVAL(Compilation of Experimental Data for Validation of Micro-Scale Dispersion Models) wind tunnel experiment data and the NJU-FZ experiment data(Nanjing University-Fang Zhuang neighborhood wind tunnel experiment data). The results show that the wind model can reproduce the vortexes triggered by urban buildings well, and the flow patterns in urban street canyons and building clusters can also be represented. Due to the complex shapes of buildings and their distributions, the simulation deviations/discrepancies from the measurements are usually caused by the simplification of the building shapes and the determination of the key zone sizes. The computational efficiencies of different cases are also discussed in this paper. The model has a high computational efficiency compared to traditional numerical models that solve the Navier–Stokes equations, and can produce very high-resolution(1–5 m) wind fields of a complex neighborhood scale urban building canopy(～ 1 km ×1km) in less than 3 min when run on a personal computer.     

China's EarthLab——Forefront of Earth System Simulation Research

This article introduces "EarthLab ", a major new Earth system numerical simulation facility developed in China.EarthLab is a numerical simulation system for a physical climate system, an environmental system, an ecological system, a solid earth system, and a space weather system as a whole with a high-performance scientific computing platform.EarthLab consists of five key elements—namely: a global earth numerical simulation system, a regional high-precision simulation system, a supercomputing support and management system, a database, data assimilation and visualization system, and a high-performance computing system for earth sciences. EarthLab helps to study the atmosphere, hydrosphere,cryosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere, as well as their interactions, to improve the accuracy of predictions by integrating simulations and observations, and to provide a scientific foundation for major issues such as national disaster prevention and mitigation. The construction and operation of EarthLab will involve close cooperation with joint contributions and shared benefits.     

Framework of distributed coupled atmosphere-ocean-wave modeling system

In order to research the interactions between the atmosphere and ocean as well as their important role in the intensive weather systems of coastal areas, and to improve the forecasting ability of the hazardous weather processes of coastal areas, a coupled atmosphere-ocean-wave modeling system has been developed. The agent-based environment framework for linking models allows flexible and dynamic information exchange between models. For the purpose of flexibility, portability and scalability, the framework of the whole system takes a multi-layer architecture that includes a user interface layer, computational layer and service-enabling layer. The numerical experiment presented in this paper demonstrates the performance of the distributed coupled modeling system.     

Study on Formation Mechanisms of Heavy Rainfall Within the Meiyu Along the Mid-Lower Yangtze River and Theories and Methods of Their Detection and Prediction

As the project of National Key Basic Research Development Program: Research on Formation Mechanisms and Predictive Theories of Major Weather Disasters in China has been fulfilled by 5-yr efforts of Chinese scientists, achieving results of great significance are as follows: 1) development of multi-scale physical models for Meiyu frontal heavy rainfall based on a range of real-time observations; 2) construction of synoptic models for such heavy rainfall; 3) the Meiyu front found to consist of multi-scale systems that represent a subtropical front, which shears structural features of an extratropical front and ITCZ, displaying sometimes a bi-front feature in the mid-lower Yangtze Basin (MLYB). The positive feedback between pre-frontal wet physical processes and over-front strong convective activities as well as interactions among multi-scale systems of the Meiyu front act as the important mechanism for the maintenance and development of the Meiyu front; 4) proposal of theories and methods for quantitative retrieval of multiple mesoscale torrential rains from satellite remote sensings, leading to a line of products; 5) investigation of applicable theories and techniques for retrieving the heavy rainfall system's 3D structure from dual-Doppler synchronous detectings; and 6) development of a system for meso heavy rainfall numerical prediction models with a 3D variational data assimilation scheme included, a tool that played an active role in flood combating and relief activities over the Huaihe River Basin (HRB) in 2003.     

A multi-scale urban atmospheric dispersion model for emergency management

To assist emergency management planning and prevention in case of hazardous chemical release into the atmosphere,especially in densely built-up regions with large populations,a multi-scale urban atmospheric dispersion model was established.Three numerical dispersion experiments,at horizontal resolutions of 10 m,50 m and 3000 m,were performed to estimate the adverse effects of toxic chemical release in densely built-up areas.The multi-scale atmospheric dispersion model is composed of the Weather Forecasting and Research （WRF） model,the Open Source Field Operation and Manipulation software package,and a Lagrangian dispersion model.Quantification of the adverse health effects of these chemical release events are given by referring to the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency＇s Acute Exposure Guideline Levels.The wind fields of the urban-scale case,with 3 km horizontal resolution,were simulated by the Beijing Rapid Update Cycle system,which were utilized by the WRF model.The sub-domain-scale cases took advantage of the computational fluid dynamics method to explicitly consider the effects of buildings.It was found that the multi-scale atmospheric dispersion model is capable of simulating the flow pattern and concentration distribution on different scales,ranging from several meters to kilometers,and can therefore be used to improve the planning of prevention and response programs.     

Numerical Simulations of Impacts of Urbanization on Heavy Rainfall in Beijing Using Different Land-Use Data

A summer strong convective precipitation event on 10 July 2004 over Beijing is numerically simulated in this paper, and the impact of urban heat island (UHI) on summer convective rain is investigated. The analysis reveals that a mesoscale convective cloud cluster system leads to this heavy rainfall event, suggesting the supply of moisture by the large scale circulation before the initiation of precipitation, a generally weaker UHI of 2-3℃existed in the urban area. Much like a sea breeze, the anomalously warm urban air created relatively low pressure, inducing the inflow of cooler rural air towards the urban center, which is favorable to the ascending motion and the formation of convective precipitation over the urban area. In addition, the numerical simulation of the strong convective precipitation event suggests that the simulated result of precipitation using the 2002 LANDSAT-7 land-use data with 30-m resolution is much better than that using the 1992-1993 USGS land-use data with 1-km resolution, whether in the magnitude of rainfall or in the location of precipitation. The simulation confirms to some extent that the UHI has a significant role in causing extreme rainfall event.     

Numerical Simulation of Regional Short-Range Climate Anomalies

With the high-speed development of numerical weather prediction, since the later 1980’s, the prediction of short-range climate anomalies has attracted worldwide meteorologists’ attention. What the so called short-range re-fers to the time scale from one month to one season or more. In dealing with the problem of short-range climate pre-diction, two points are needed noticing: one is the basic research to explore or investigate the mechanism of variability of the slow varying components which mainly include internal dynamics of extratropics, external forcings and tropical dynamics, and the other is the modeling efforts to simulate the process of the long-term evolution of the signal which include the improvement of model quality, stochastic prediction and the air-sea-coupled model (Miyakoda et al.,1986). Previous researches on the numerical prediction of short-term climate anomalies are mostly concentrated in the analysis of variables with global spatial scale, especially the global general atmospheric circulation analysis.As to the simulation or prediction of regional short-term climate anomalies, there exist many difficulties and problems. Though some meteorologists are devoting themself to this field, up to now, they have not reached satisfac-tory results. As a primary effort, by using the 2-level general atmospheric circulation model developed in the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAP-AGCM) (Zeng et al., 1989), and taking the year of 1985 as a case, a numerical simulation of regional short-term climate change is completed. We pay high attention to the predictand of anomalous summer rainfall in the Yangtze River and Yellow River valleys, especially its month-to-month variation.     

Mean Winds Through an Inhomogeneous Urban Canopy

The mean flow within inhomogeneous urban areas is investigated using an urban canopy model. The urban canopy model provides a conceptual and computational tool for representing urban areas in a way suitable for parameterisation within numerical weather prediction and urban air quality models. Average aerodynamic properties of groups of buildings on a neighbourhood scale can be obtained in terms of the geometry and layout of the buildings. These canopy parameters then determine the spatially averaged mean wind speeds within the canopy as a whole. Using morphological data for real cities, computations are performed for representative sections of cities. Simulations are performed to study transitions between different urban neighbourhoods, such as residential areas and city centres. Such transitions are accompanied by changes in mean building density and building height. These are considered first in isolation, then in combination, and the generic effects of each type of change are identified. The simulation of winds through a selection of downtown Los Angeles is considered as an example. An increase in canopy density is usually associated with a decrease in the mean wind speed. The largest difference between mean winds in canopies of different densities occurs near ground level. Winds generally decrease upon encountering a taller canopy of the same density, but this effect may be reversed very near the ground, with possible speed-ups if the canopy is especially tall. In the vicinity of a transition there is an overshoot in the mean wind speed in the bottom part of the canopy. Mechanisms for these effects are discussed.     

Evaluation of the vegetated urban canopy model (VUCM) and its impacts on urban boundary layer simulation

The vegetated urban canopy model (VUCM) is implemented in a meteorological model, the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS), for urban atmospheric modeling. The VUCM includes various urban physical processes such as in-canyon radiative transfer, turbulent energy exchanges, substrate heat conduction, and in-canyon momentum drag. The coupled model RAMS/VUCM is evaluated and then used to examine its impacts on the dynamic and thermodynamic structure of the urban boundary layer (UBL) in the Seoul metropolitan area. The spatial pattern of the nocturnal urban heat island (UHI) in Seoul is quite well simulated by the RAMS/VUCM. A statistical evaluation of 2-m air temperature reveals a significant improvement in model performance, especially in the nighttime. The RAMS/VUCM simulates the diurnal variations of surface energy balance fluxes realistically. This contributes to a reasonable UBL formation. A weakly unstable UBL is formed in the nighttime with UBL heights of about 100–200 m. When urban surfaces are represented in the RAMS using a land surface model of the Land Ecosystem-Atmosphere Feedback (LEAF), the RAMS/LEAF produces strong cold biases and thus fails to simulate UHI formation. This is due to the poor representation or absence of important urban physical processes in the RAMS/LEAF. This study implies that urban physical processes should be included in numerical models in order to reasonably simulate meteorology and air quality in urban areas and that the VUCM is one of the promising urban canopy models.     

RAMS 2001: Current status and future directions

Summary ?An overview of the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) is presented. We focus on new developments in the RAMS physics and computational algorithms since 1992. We also summarize some of the recent applications of RAMS that includes synoptic-scale weather systems and climate studies, to small-scale research using RAMS configured as a large eddy simulation model or to even flow around urban buildings. The applications include basic research on clouds, cloud systems, and storms, examination of interactions between tropical deep convective systems and ocean circulations, simulations of tropical cyclones, extreme precipitation estimation, regional climatic studies of the interactions between the atmosphere and the biosphere or snow-covered land-surfaces, prototype realtime mesoscale numerical weather prediction, air pollution applications, and airflow around buildings. Received March 12, 2001; revised August 28, 2001     

Numerical Study of Winter Urban Boundary Layer Structure over Beijing Area

1. Introduction The urban canopy layer (UCL) (Roth, 2000) is defined as a layer in the vertical structure of urban boundary layer (UBL) ranging from the surface to the top of buildings. The urban infrastructures within UCL, such as buildings with different heights, the het- erogeneity of urban land cover and the anthropogenic activity, all directly influence the thermal and dynam- ical structures of atmosphere and net radiation budget at the surface, meanwhile, affect the structure of ur- …     

城市应急服务气象数值模拟系统的建立与应用

针对城市应急需求,建立了突发公共事件应急气象数值模拟系统。该系统主要包含两个模型：①以中尺度数值模式MM5和区域大气模拟系统RAMS 60为核心的快速污染扩散数值预报模型,该模型具有精细准确、可预测性的优点,应急人员在接到命令后15 min内可完成事发后1 h的气体扩散应急产品的制作;②以街区模式和高斯模式为核心的快速应急气象服务软件,它具有操作简洁、安装方便、产品输出快速直观的优点,能够在2～3 min内完成事发地点应急产品制作。通过一年的日常城市应急演习及奥运会、残奥会的应用证明,该服务系统较好的满足了应急指挥时效性、服务性的需求,为北京城市应急指挥人员现场处置提供即时科学依据。     

城市边界层数值模式研究以及在香港地区复杂地形下的应用

由于城市表面复杂的下垫面的影响,使得城市边界层风温场结构较其他下垫面有很大不同.作者通过将城市中500 m网格内的各种地表类型,按照各自在网格中所占的百分比及各自的地表参数加权平均,得到此网格的平均的地表参数,以此准确反映下垫面的情况,建立分辨率为500 m的城市边界层能量平衡模式,将此城市边界层能量平衡模式嵌入动力学框架,并用中尺度模式MM5作为初始条件和边界条件,建立一个既考虑中尺度背景场又详细考虑城市下垫面复杂性与多样性的城市边界层模式系统.将模式系统运用于香港复杂地形下的边界层特点的模拟研究.通过与观测值的比较,模式能够较准确的模拟出海陆风、城市热岛等热力过程,及气流过山引起的绕流等动力过程,并且通过对边界层高度的模拟预测污染扩散的条件等.说明模式系统具有模拟在中尺度的背景场的控制下海陆风环流、过山堆积和绕流及城市热力影响的能力.     

Synthetic-Eddy Method for Urban Atmospheric Flow Modelling

The computational fluid dynamics code Fluidity, with anisotropic mesh adaptivity, is used as a multi-scale obstacle-accommodating meteorological model. A novel method for generating realistic inlet boundary conditions based on the view of turbulence as a superposition of synthetic eddies is adopted. It is able to reproduce prescribed first-order and second-order one-point statistics and turbulence length scales. The aim is to simulate an urban boundary layer. The model is validated against two standard benchmark tests: a plane channel flow numerical simulation and a flow past a cube physical simulation. The performed large-eddy simulations are in good agreement with both reference models giving confidence that the model can be used to successfully simulate urban atmospheric flows.