Journal
JOURNAL OF METEOROLOGICAL RESEARCH
Volume 35, Issue 6, Pages 1023-1040Publisher
SPRINGER HEIDELBERG
DOI: 10.1007/s13351-021-1033-y
Keywords
urbanization effect; regional climate model; uncertainty analysis; lateral boundary condition; urban fraction
Categories
Funding
- National Key Research and Development Program of China [2018YFC1507801]
- National Science Foundation of U.S. [AGS-1419526]
- Beijing Natural Science Foundation [8204061]
- Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Collaborative Innovation Community Construction Project [19245419D]
- State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology [2017-KF-05]
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This study investigated the impact of urbanization on precipitation in eastern China using the WRF model, showing a significant decrease in precipitation in North China due to reduced evaporation and latent heating, and an increase in precipitation to the south of the large-scale urbanization areas due to circulation changes. The study also highlighted the importance of urban fraction in determining the intensity of urbanization effects within urban areas.
Eastern China has experienced rapid urbanization during the past four decades, and it is necessary to understand the impacts of the urbanization on the regional climate. Previous simulations with either regional climate models (RCMs) or general circulation models have produced inconsistent and statistically non-significant urbanization effects on precipitation during the East Asian summer monsoon. In the studies with RCMs, reanalysis data were used as the lateral boundary conditions (LBCs) for both urban and non-urban experiments. Since the same LBCs may limit the urbanization effect, in this study, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model nested within the Global Forecast System (GFS), both of which were coupled with an urban canopy model, were used to explore the urbanization effect over eastern China. The WRF's LBCs in the runs with/without urbanization were provided by the corresponding GFS runs with/without urbanization. The results showed a significant decrease in precipitation over North China, mainly due to a marked decrease in evaporation and the divergence induced by the reduced latent heating in the mid and upper atmosphere, from the experiment with urbanization. Meanwhile, to the north and south of the large-scale urbanization areas, especially to the south of the Yangtze River, precipitation increased significantly due to large-scale urbanization-induced circulation change. With the same LBCs for the WRF runs with/without urbanization, the urbanization effects were limited only to urban and nearby areas; no significant change was found to the south of the Yangtze River, since the same LBCs hampered the effects of urbanization on large-scale circulation. In addition, this study demonstrated that the urban fraction may be a key factor that affects the intensity of the urbanization effect within the urban areas.
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