Identification

Title

Impacts of urban processes and urbanization on summer precipitation: A case study of heavy rainfall in Beijing on 1 August 2006

Abstract

Finescale simulations (with 500-m grid spacing) using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) were used to investigate impacts of urban processes and urbanization on a localized, summer, heavy rainfall in Beijing. Evaluation using radar and gauge data shows that this configuration of WRF with three-dimensional variational data assimilation of local weather and GPS precipitable water data can simulate this event generally well. Additional WRF simulations were conducted to test the sensitivity of simulation of this storm to different urban processes and urban land-use scenarios. The results confirm that the city does play an important role in determining storm movement and rainfall amount. Comparison of cases with and without the presence of the city of Beijing with respect to the approaching storm shows that the urban effect seems to lead to the breaking of the squall line into convective cells over the urban area. The change of precipitation amount depends on the degree of urbanization (i.e., the change over time in the extent of Beijing city). Model results show that an early urbanization prior to 1980 decreases the maximum rainfall, whereas further urbanization in Beijing is conducive to bifurcating the path of rainfall. According to sensitivity results with a single-layer urban canopy model, the thermal transport (sensible and latent heating) induced by the presence of an urban area apparently is more important than associated momentum transport, with latent and sensible heating apparently having equally important roles in the modification of simulated precipitation. Urban surfaces tend to cause the rainfall to be more locally concentrated. High-rise urban cores may bifurcate the path of rainfall as well as increase the area percentage of heavy rainfall.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7br8ssp

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

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Text

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title

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reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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date type

publication

effective date

2011-04-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2011 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

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None

Responsible organisations

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contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

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