Modification of the local winds due to hypothetical urbanization of the Zagreb surroundings

Summary The aim of this study was to investigate possible effects of two hypothetical scenarios of the urbanization of Zagreb’s surroundings on the local winds, which are established under summertime anticyclonic conditions. For this purpose, the nonhydrostatic mesoscale meteorological model MEMO was applied to the greater Zagreb area. Three simulations were performed. One employed the current land-use distribution, while the other two corresponded to an increase of the densely urbanized area by 12.5% (test 1) and 37.5% (test 2), respectively. Apart from the hypothetically urbanized areas, where average surface wind speed reductions of 8% and 18% were obtained for test 1 and test 2, respectively, the rest of the domain was not significantly affected by hypothetical urbanization. The differences between the wind vectors for the predicted current state and the hypothetical state were more pronounced and found at higher altitudes during the night compared to daytime values. For all three simulations the same diurnal variation of the depth of anabatic/katabatic wind flow generated on south-facing slopes of 1 km high mountain Medvednica was obtained. During the night the depth of well-developed katabatic flow was about 370 m, while during the day the depth of anabatic flow grew from about 550 m in the late morning up to about 1140 m in the late afternoon. Received October 27, 2000 Revised August 4, 2001