TY - JOUR
T1 - Chicago's heat island and climate change
T2 - Bridging the scales via dynamical downscaling
AU - Conry, Patrick
AU - Sharma, Ashish
AU - Potosnak, Mark J.
AU - Leo, Laura S.
AU - Bensman, Edward
AU - Hellmann, Jessica J.
AU - Fernando, Harindra J.S.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 American Meteorological Society.
Copyright:
Copyright 2015 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - The interaction of global climate change and urban heat islands (UHI) is expected to have far-reaching impacts on the sustainability of the world's rapidly growing urban population centers. Given that a wide range of spatiotemporal scales contributed by meteorological forcing and complex surface heterogeneity complicates UHI, a multimodel nested approach is used in this paper to study climate-change impacts on the Chicago, Illinois, UHI, covering a range of relevant scales. One-way dynamical downscaling is used with a model chain consisting of global climate (Community Atmosphere Model), regional climate (Weather Research and Forecasting Model), and microscale ("ENVI-met") models. Nested mesoscale and microscale models are evaluated against the present-day observations (including a dedicated urban miniature field study), and the results favorably demonstrate the fidelity of the downscaling techniques that were used. A simple building-energy model is developed and used in conjunction with microscale-model output to calculate future energy demands for a building, and a substantial increase (as much as 26% during daytime) is noted for future (~2080) climate. Although winds and lake-breeze circulation for future climate are favorable for reducing energy usage by 7%, the benefits are outweighed by such factors as exacerbated UHI and air temperature. An adverse change in human-comfort indicators is also noted in the future climate, with 92% of the population experiencing thermal discomfort. The model chain that was used has general applicability for evaluating climate-change impacts on city centers and, hence, for urban-sustainability studies.
AB - The interaction of global climate change and urban heat islands (UHI) is expected to have far-reaching impacts on the sustainability of the world's rapidly growing urban population centers. Given that a wide range of spatiotemporal scales contributed by meteorological forcing and complex surface heterogeneity complicates UHI, a multimodel nested approach is used in this paper to study climate-change impacts on the Chicago, Illinois, UHI, covering a range of relevant scales. One-way dynamical downscaling is used with a model chain consisting of global climate (Community Atmosphere Model), regional climate (Weather Research and Forecasting Model), and microscale ("ENVI-met") models. Nested mesoscale and microscale models are evaluated against the present-day observations (including a dedicated urban miniature field study), and the results favorably demonstrate the fidelity of the downscaling techniques that were used. A simple building-energy model is developed and used in conjunction with microscale-model output to calculate future energy demands for a building, and a substantial increase (as much as 26% during daytime) is noted for future (~2080) climate. Although winds and lake-breeze circulation for future climate are favorable for reducing energy usage by 7%, the benefits are outweighed by such factors as exacerbated UHI and air temperature. An adverse change in human-comfort indicators is also noted in the future climate, with 92% of the population experiencing thermal discomfort. The model chain that was used has general applicability for evaluating climate-change impacts on city centers and, hence, for urban-sustainability studies.
KW - Climate change
KW - Coupled models
KW - Heat islands
KW - Lake effects
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84943811885&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84943811885&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1175/JAMC-D-14-0241.1
DO - 10.1175/JAMC-D-14-0241.1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84943811885
SN - 1558-8424
VL - 54
SP - 1430
EP - 1448
JO - Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology
JF - Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology
IS - 7
ER -