Birmingham Urban Heat Islands during 2003 Heatwave Period ? Preliminary WRF/BEP Simulation

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Birmingham Urban Heat Islands during 2003
Heatwave Period? Preliminary WRF/BEP Simulation

• Xiaoming Cai, Richard Bassett
• and John E. Thornes
• School of Geography, Earth and
• Environmental Sciences
• University of Birmingham

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Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF)
36h WRF Precip Forecast
WRF is an advanced mesoscale forecast and
assimilation system, and accelerate research
advances into operations

• Collaborative partnership, principally among
  NCAR, NOAA,
• DoD, OU/CAPS, FAA, and university community
• Development conducted by 15 WRF Working Groups
  
• Ongoing active testing and rapidly growing
  community use
• Over 1,600 registered community users, annual
• workshops and tutorials for research
  community
• Operational implementation at NCEP and AFWA in
  2004

Analyzed Precip
27 Sept. 2002
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WRF Model Characteristics

• Three-dimensional, time varying, multi-domain
  nesting
• State-of-the-art, transportable, and efficient
  in a massively parallel
• computing environment.
• Design priority for high-resolution applications
• Advanced data assimilation systems developed in
  tandem with the
• model itself.
• Numerous physics options, tapping into the
  experience of the full
• modeling community.
• Maintained and supported as a community
  mesoscale model to facilitate
• broad use in the research community.
• Research advances will have a direct path to
  operations.

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WRF-BEP Configuration

• Four nested domains are configured
• Surface land data
• Terrain US SGS (resolution 30)
• Landuse type US SGS (30), 24 categories
• Urban type CORINE 2000 Owen et al. (2006)
• Meteorological initial and boundary conditions
• US-NCEP Analysis (FNL from GFS) 1 degree
  resolution, every 6 hours

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WRF-BEP Domains
Configuration of the nested domains. The figure
box is the boundary of Domain 1 and the embedded
boxes are the boundaries of Domain 2, 3 4.
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WRF-BEP Configuration
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Domains 3 and 4
Configuration of the nested domains. The figure
box is the boundary of Domain 3 and the embedded
box is the boundaries of Domain 4.
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Domain 4
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WRF-BEP Configuration

• Four nested domains are configured
• Surface land data
• Terrain US SGS (resolution 30)
• Landuse type US SGS (30), 24 categories
• Urban type CORINE 2000 Owen et al. (2006)
• Meteorological initial and boundary conditions
• US-NCEP Analysis (FNL from GFS) 1 degree
  resolution, every 6 hours

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Urban type urban fraction for Domain 4
Urban type for Domain 4 30non-urban 31low
intensity residential 32high intensity
residential 33commercial
Urban area fraction for Domain 4 0-100
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WRF-BEP Configuration

• Four nested domains are configured
• Surface land data
• Terrain US SGS (resolution 30)
• Landuse type US SGS (30), 24 categories
• Urban type CORINE 2000 Owen et al. (2006)
• Meteorological initial and boundary conditions
• US-NCEP Analysis (FNL from GFS) 1 degree
  resolution, every 6 hours

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Animation of simulation results for Domains 2 4
Domain 2
Domain 4
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Temperature field 2100-2400 GMT 4 August 2003
(a)
(b)

• Temperature at 2 m above ground
• 2100
• 2200
• 2300
• 2400

(c)
(d)
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Temperature field at 0000 GMT 9 August 2003
Temperature at 2 m above ground for Domain 4
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Observed temperature at 3 stations 1-10 August
2003
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Future work

• To fine-tune the model
• To validate the model
• To simulate various scenarios with different
  lanuse types
• To apply it to 2010 scenarios