Black Holes and Loose Connections in a Global Urban Network

This paper introduces the concept of black holes and loose connections in a global urban hierarchy. Black holes are defined as large cities, with a population of over 3 million, that are not classified as world cities. The paper draws upon a classification that uses advanced producer services as an indicator of world city status. Large, nonworld cities are identified, and provisional ideas about explaining their position are outlined. Connectivity and population data are used in a simple regression analysis to identify loose connections: cities whose connectivity is less than that predicted by their population.     

ISTANBUL'S BOSTANS: A MILLENNIUM OF MARKET GARDENS*

ABSTRACT. For centuries, a network of market gardens throughout Istanbul provisioned the city with fresh vegetables. These bostans and their gardeners held a respected place in Istanbul life, contributing to the city's food and employment needs. Today, only fragments remain. Massive urban development, intense competition for metropolitan space, modernization, changing institutions and laws, and the global industrialization of food have threatened this tradition with extinction. But in spite of the overwhelming forces behind their demise, some of Istanbul's bostans persist. Efforts to support and promote the gardens, and to draw from the expertise and experience of their gardeners, are emerging. From a historical perspective, this article examines Istanbul's bostans to understand their meaning and contribution to the city's people and landscape.     

西安市冬季冷暖的历史演变对采暖的影响

本文针对CAPPS2.0系统在业务化自动运行过程中的一些问题,提供了一套具体可行的解决方案,实现了CAPPS系统的全自动运行,具有很高的实用价值。     

侯马市酸雨概况及其气象条件分析

通过对侯马近14a酸雨观测资料分析,发现侯马出现酸雨的概率较大,强度较强,时间变化特征明显,与气象条件关系密切。     

Numerical Simulation of Wind and Temperature Fields over Beijing Area in Summer

1. IntroductionThe basic role of urban-rural boundary layer re-search is to study all kinds of physical process changesin the atmosphere boundary layer over urban and itssurrounding areas. Urban heat island (UHI) is a well-known feature of urban-rural climate. Attempts toincrease the understanding of the causes of the UHIand other urban-rural boundary layer phenomena haveused observational, theoretical and modelling methodssince long before. Seaman (1989) used a hydrostaticmodel, with real …     

Vertical dynamic and thermodynamic characteristics of urban lower boundary layer and its relationship with aerosol concentration over Beijing

By utilizing observational data from a 325 m tower of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on March 19-29, 2001 and August 11-25, 2003, a comprehensive study was conducted on the vertical dynamical and thermodynamic characteristics of the urban lower boundary layer (ULBL) and its relationship with aerosol concentration over Beijing. Firstly, a comparative analysis was made on the gradient data (wind, temperature and humidity), ultrasonic data (atmospheric turbulences) and air-quality observations at different tower heights (47, 120 and 280 m). Secondly, a diagnosis was made to reveal the major features of normalized variances of velocity and temperature, turbulence kinetic energy as well as their relationship with aerosol concentrations. Furthermore, the characteristics of the ULBL vertical structure and the TSP concentration/distribution variations during a sand/dust weather process were also analyzed. The outcome of the study showed that under unstable stratification, the normalized variances of velocity (σu/u*, σv/u*, σw/u*) and temperature (σT/T*) at 47 and 120 m heights fit the Monin-Obukhov similarity (MOS) framework and the fitting formulas were given out accordingly. According to the stratification parameter (z′/L), the stable ULBL could be divided into 2 zones. With z′/L<0.1, it was a weakly stable zone and MOS framework was applicable. The other was a highly stable zone with z′/L>0.1 and the normalized velocity variances tended to increase along with higher stability, but it remained constant for normalized temperature variances. At daytime, the near-surface layer includes two heights of 47 and 120 m, while 280 m has been above it. The ULBL analysis in conjunction with a sand/dust weather process in Beijing in March 2001 indicated that the maximum concentration of Total Suspended Particulates (TSP) at 320 m reached 913.3 μg/m3 and the particles were transported from the upper to lower ULBL, which was apparently related to the development process of a low-level jet and its concomitant strong sinking motion.     

Studies on wind environment around high buildings in urban areas

High buildings or architectural complex in urban areas remarkably distort the urban surface wind fields. As the air flow approaches,local strong wind may appear around the buildings. The strong wind makes the pedestrians on sidewalks, entrances and terrace very uncomfortable and causes the pedestrian level wind environment problem. In this studies, hot-wire wind measurement, wind scouring in wind tunnel and numerical computation were carried out to evaluate the wind environment of tall buildings in the prevailing flow conditions in Beijing areas. The results obtained by three techniques were compared and mutually verified. The conclusions drawn from three approaches agree with each other. Also the advantages and limitations of each method were analyzed. It is suggested that the combination of different techniques may produce better assessment of wind environment around high buildings.     

Study of statistically correcting model CMAQ-MOS for forecasting regional air quality

Based on analysis of the air pollution observational data at 8 observation sites in Beijing including outer suburbs during the period from September 2004 to March 2005, this paper reveals synchronal and in-phase characteristics in the spatial and temporal variation of air pollutants on a city-proper scale at deferent sites; describes seasonal differences of the pollutant emission influence between the heating and non-heating periods, also significantly local differences of the pollutant emission influence between the urban district and outer suburbs, i.e. the spatial and temporal distribution of air pollutant is closely related with that of the pollutant emission intensity. This study shows that due to complexity of the spatial and temporal distribution of pollution emission sources, the new generation Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model developed by the EPA of USA produced forecasts, as other models did, with a systematic error of significantly lower than observations, albeit the model has better capability than previous models had in predicting the spatial distribution and variation tendency of multi-sort pollutants. The reason might be that the CMAQ adopts average amount of pollutant emission inventory, so that the model is difficult to objectively and finely describe the distribution and variation of pollution emission sources intensity on different spatial and temporal scales in the areas, in which the pollution is to be forecast. In order to correct the systematic prediction error resulting from the average pollutant emission inventory in CMAQ, this study proposes a new way of combining dynamics and statistics and establishes a statistically correcting model CMAQ-MOS for forecasts of regional air quality by utilizing the relationship of CMAQ outputs with corresponding observations, and tests the forecast capability. The investigation of experiments presents that CMAQ-MOS reduces the systematic errors of CMAQ because of the uncertainty of pollution emission inventory and improves the forecast level of air quality. Also this work employed a way of combining point and area forecasting, i.e. taking the products of CMAQ for a center site to forecast air pollution for other sites in vicinity with the scheme of model products "reanalysis" and average over the "area".     

The diurnal and seasonal characteristics of urban heat island variation in Beijing city and surrounding areas and impact factors based on remote sensing satellite data

Based on the land surface temperature (LST), the land cover classification map,vegetation coverage, and surface evapotranspiration derived from EOS-MODIS satellite data, and by the use of GIS spatial analytic technique and multivariate statistical analysis method, the urban heat island (UHI) spatial distribution of the diurnal and seasonal variabilities and its driving forces are studied in Beijing city and surrounding areas in 2001. The relationships among UHI distribution and landcover categories, topographic factor, vegetation greenness, and surface evapotranspiration are analyzed. The results indicate that: (i) The significant UHI occur in Beijing city areas in the four seasons due to high heat capacity and multi-reflection of compression building, as well as with special topographic features of its three sides surrounded by mountains,especially in the summer. The UHI spatial distribution is corresponding with the urban geometry structure profile. The LST difference is approximately 4-6℃ between Beijing city and suburb areas, comparatively is 8- 10℃ between Beijing city area and outer suburb area in northwestern regions. (ii) The UHI distribution and intensity in daytime are different from nighttime in Beijing city area, the nighttime UHI is obvious. However, in the daytime, the significant UHI mainly appears in the summer, the autumn takes second place, and the UHI in the winter and the spring seem not obvious. The surface evapotranspiration in suburb areas is larger than that in urban areas in the summer, and high latent heat exchange is evident, which leads to LST difference between city area and suburb area. (iii) The reflection of surface landcover categories is sensitive to the UHI, the correlation between vegetation greenness and UHI shows obviously negative.The scatterplot shows that there is the negative correlation between NDVI and LST (R2 = 0.6481).The results demonstrate that the vegetation greenness is an important factor for reducing the UHI,and large-scale construction of greenbelts can considerably reduce the UHI effect.     

面向信息化的城市规划分析

本文首先揭示了建设信息化城市的原因所在;在此基础上,分别对如何实现城市信息化以及如何维持信息化城市的可持续发展进行了规划,并且指出,城市规划应当兼顾两者,不可偏废。