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Assessing the Impact of Enhanced Hydrological Processes on Urban Hydrometeorology with Application to Two Cities in Contrasting Climates

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Assessing the Impact of Enhanced Hydrological Processes on Urban Hydrometeorology with Application to Two Cities in Contrasting Climates APRIL 2016 Y A N G E T A L . 1031 Assessing the Impact of Enhanced Hydrological Processes on Urban Hydrometeorology with Application to Two Cities in Contrasting Climates JIACHUAN YANG AND ZHI-HUA WANG School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona MATEI GEORGESCU School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona FEI CHEN AND MUKUL TEWARI National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado (Manuscript received 30 June 2015, in final form 2 January 2016) ABSTRACT To enhance the capability of models in better characterizing the urban water cycle, physical parameteri- zations of urban hydrological processes have been implemented into the single-layer urban canopy model in the widely used Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model. While the new model has been evaluated offline against field measurements at various cities, its performance in online settings via coupling to atmo- spheric dynamics requires further examination. In this study, the impact of urban hydrological processes on regional hydrometeorology of the fully integrated WRF–urban modeling system for two major cities in the United States, namely, Phoenix and Houston, is assessed. Results show that including hydrological processes improves prediction of the 2-m dewpoint temperature, an indicative measure of coupled thermal and hy- drological processes. The implementation of green roof systems as an urban mitigation strategy is then tested at the annual scale. The reduction of environmental temperature and increase of humidity by green roofs indicate strong diurnal and seasonal variations and are significantly affected by geographical and climatic conditions. Comparison with offline studies reveals that land–atmosphere interactions play a crucial role in determining the effect of green roofs. 1. Introduction 2011; Martilli et al. 2002), among which the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model–urban system To meet the demand of a rapidly growing global pop- has been widely utilized and examined for major met- ulation, urban areas have expanded considerably in recent ropolitan regions around the world (Kusaka et al. 2012; decades (Seto et al. 2011). Through the modification of land Lin et al. 2008; Miao and Chen 2008). surface energy and moisture balances, urbanization has The WRF Model includes several urban parameteri- determinant impacts on local and regional hydroclimates, zation options, including the single-layer urban canopy leading to elevated temperature (Arnfield 2003; Yang et al. model (SLUCM), which has been extensively studied 2015a), reduced humidity (Unkasevic´ et al. 2001), and and renders satisfactory capability in resolving urban change in precipitation patterns (Georgescu et al. 2012). To land surface processes with a moderate requirement of capture urban land–atmosphere interactions, numerous input parameter space (Kusaka et al. 2001; Salamanca mesoscale atmosphere–urban modeling systems have been et al. 2011; Wang et al. 2011a,b). However, because of developed in the last decade (Best 2005; Chen et al. the oversimplified representation of urban hydrological processes, existing coupled atmosphere–urban model- ing systems, including the WRF–SLUCM, have the least Corresponding author address: Zhi-Hua Wang, School of Sustain- able Engineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State Univer- capacity in modeling the latent heat flux compared to sity, 501 E. Tyler Mall, P.O. Box 875306, Tempe, AZ 85287-5306. other fluxes (Grimmond et al. 2010, 2011; Wang et al. E-mail: [email protected] 2013). The inadequate urban hydrological modeling DOI: 10.1175/JHM-D-15-0112.1 Ó 2016 American Meteorological Society 1032 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY VOLUME 17 consequently introduces errors into the atmospheric One important function of the mesoscale atmosphere– system via the lower boundary condition, impairing the urban modeling system is to evaluate potential strategies reliability and accuracy of modeling land–atmosphere for sustainable cities. Urban areas, owing to impacts interactions (Song and Wang 2015a). of global climate change, are projected to experience The importance of realistic representation of hy- more frequent occurrences of climatic extremes in drological processes in the urban canopy model has the future [e.g., heat wave (Meehl and Tebaldi 2004) long been recognized. Aiming at improving prediction and strong precipitation (Kripalani et al. 2007)], of turbulent heat fluxes, Miao and Chen (2014) in- increasing the need for sustainable adaptation/ corporated urban irrigation, oasis effect, and anthro- mitigation strategies in areas where the majority of pogenic latent heat into the SLUCM. Evaluation the globe’s inhabitants reside (IPCC 2012; Georgescu against meteorological observations in Beijing showed et al. 2014). Green (vegetated) roofs have significant that modeled latent heat flux was evidently improved. potential and have been adopted in many cities (e.g., Inspired by this work and a state-of-the-art urban Chicago) to alleviate urban-induced heat stresses. canopy model (Wang et al. 2011b, 2013), Yang et al. The adoption of green roofs has been shown to reduce (2015a) further implemented physically based pa- near-surface temperature (Yang and Wang 2014, rameterization of evaporation over impervious sur- 2015; Georgescu 2015), improve stormwater man- faces and incorporated a green roof system into the agement (VanWoert et al. 2005; Carter and Jackson SLUCM. Significant enhancement in prediction of la- 2007), and enhance air quality (Yang et al. 2008; tent heat flux was found for the four metropolitan Rowe 2011). Although researches on meteorological areas investigated: Beijing (China), Vancouver (Can- impacts of green roofs are becoming increasingly ada), Phoenix (United States), and Montreal (Canada). widespread, most investigations have focused on However, tested in an offline (i.e., not dynamically cou- building-resolving scales and explored with offline pled to the overlying atmosphere) setting, this study did models where meteorological forcing is provided as not consider the interaction between the land and atmo- boundary conditions (Sailor 2008; Sun et al. 2013). spheric system, and the potential omission of important Upscaling the results of these studies for preparing feedback mechanisms can lead to significant uncertainty guidance on green roof implementation for a city or and potential errors in model results (Brubaker and at regional scales remains challenging because of the Entekhabi 1996). substantial influence of surface heterogeneity and Using the online WRF–urban modeling system, land–atmosphere interactions (Ramamurthy et al. Georgescu et al. (2011) studied the diurnal cycle of 2014; Song and Wang 2015b). near-surface temperature over the urbanizing Phoenix Consequently, there have been only a handful of metropolitan area, concluding that urban irrigation did studies investigating climatic (Georgescu et al. 2014; not have a significant impact on near-surface temper- Georgescu 2015) and meteorological (Li et al. 2014) atures. Vahmani and Hogue (2014) assessed the impact impacts of green roofs in a coupled atmosphere–urban of irrigation over the Los Angeles metropolitan area by modeling framework. Georgescu et al. (2014) explored incorporating an irrigation module into the SLUCM. the benefits of green roofs relative to highly reflective With irrigation, large biases in prediction of evapo- roofs and the potential to offset urban-induced warming transpiration from urban terrain were reduced. Nev- at seasonal and annual time scales across the contiguous ertheless, other urban hydrological processes were United States. Although impacts on near-surface tem- neglected in their study, such as anthropogenic latent perature were less for green roofs relative to reflective heat and evaporation from water-holding engineered roofs, a considerably reduced hydroclimatological trade- pavements. It is also noteworthy that the aforemen- off was simulated for several regions via deployment of tioned studies focused on turbulent heat fluxes, vegetated roofs. However, assuming green roofs were whereas the impact of urban hydrological processes on infinitely evaporating without water constraint, their re- meteorological variables was rarely quantified. Though sults represented the maximum potential benefits of turbulent heat fluxes are closely related to temper- evaporating rooftop water pools rather than green roofs. ature and humidity of the atmosphere, the interac- Li et al. (2014) also compared the effectiveness of green tions among them are complex with a variety of roofs with white roofs by coupling the Princeton urban surface and meteorological conditions (Wang 2014a). canopy model into the WRF system. They focused on a Online studies that directly address the effect of hy- 3-day summer heat wave event, whereas the long-term drological processes on urban meteorology by cou- performance of green roofs was not addressed. More pling with the energy balance are still lacking in the importantly, urban hydrological processes were not ade- literature. quately represented in these studies (urban irrigation, APRIL 2016 Y A N G E T A L . 1033 FIG. 1. Geographical representation of the domain extent with topography (m) overlaid for (a) Phoenix and (b) Houston. Land-use/land-cover information of the inner domain for (c) Phoenix and (d) Houston. oasis effect, etc.), leading to potential uncertainties in the 2. Methodology findings. a. WRF–urban modeling system It is therefore
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