Presenter: Joseph Cannon
Authors: Joseph Cannon
Faculty Advisor: Brad Adams
Institution: Brigham Young University
As worldwide urbanization accelerates, the resulting changes in land cover lead to changing meteorological conditions in the vicinities of metropolitan areas. These urban effects, referred to collectively as an urban canopy, are in large part attributable to an increase in anthropogenic heating, surface emissivity and albedo in urban centers. To better understand the effects of urban canopies on climate, effective mesoscale models must be developed which allow for both analysis of existing metropolitan areas, as well as climate impact studies for future urban growth. One option for UCM (urban canopy modeling) is the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s WRF (Weather Research & Forecasting Model). This tool, though useful for urban canopy modeling, falls short in its capacity to report simple temperatures at differing elevation levels, rather defaulting to report perturbation potential temperature. Perturbation potential temperature, while useful in the analysis of airflow and in performing thermodynamic calculations, is less effective than simple temperature in understanding multi-layer thermal effects of metropolitan areas on climate. Thus, existing models lacking this parameter are incomplete in the understanding they can provide. The aim of this research is to address this issue by creating an external program which, when coupled with existing WRF forecasting models and first-law thermodynamic analyses, can produce a means whereby perturbation potential temperature and perturbation pressures may be used to calculate simple temperatures throughout the model volume. This program, though created originally for use in the greater Salt Lake City area, will be broadly applicable and may be used to reproduce similar thermal studies of other urban areas.