Urban climate simulation by incorporating satellite-derived vegetation cover distribution into a mesoscale meteorological model

We simulated urban climate with surface boundary conditions based on satellite remote sensing (RS) data. Most previous mesoscale meteorological modeling studies use land-use data instead as the surface boundary conditions. However, small patches of vegetation-cover, such as roadside trees and garden trees, are excluded from the land-use data. Therefore, we made a fractional vegetation cover (FVC) dataset with these small patches of vegetation-cover from RS data, and then simulated the urban heat island in Tokyo with FVC data as new surface boundary conditions. In addition, we compared the above simulation results with results from a simulation that used only land-use data. The comparison shows that the air temperature with the new boundary condition is up to 1.5degreesC lower than that with the old boundary condition. Furthermore, the new boundary condition led to predicted air temperatures closer to the measured temperatures than those with the old boundary condition. Therefore, it is important for urban climate simulations to include small vegetation cover.