Impact of city expansion and increased heat fluxes scenarios on the Urban Boundary Layer of Bilbao using Enviro-HIRLAM

Most of medium sized coastal cities are in continuous development and therefore, the future impacts of urbanization on the atmospheric boundary layer over them are expected to become more significant. Existing studies showed that in Bilbao, the UHI has only visualized under calm and stable conditions and for the cases studied during winter and summer time it is around 1 ºC with an extension of about 130 km2 This study is complementary to previous studies over the city and the aim is to explore how the properties and structure of the ABL are modified under different urban scenarios over Bilbao. The scenarios follow two independent drivers: the expansion of the city in several sizes and the increase of the anthropogenic heat fluxes. This study is focused on evaluating the differences between the scenarios in terms of the horizontal extension of the urban plume and vertical development of the UHI and to identify the driver that has largest impact on the ABL with respect to the current urban impact. To achieve this target, the Enviro-HIRLAM model coupled with the BEP urban module is used to perform the simulations during two short periods in summer and in winter under calm wind conditions.

GONZALEZ APARICIO Iratxe;  BAKLANOV Alexander;  HIDALGO Julia;  KORSHOLM Ulrik;  NUTERMAN Roman;  MAHURA Alexander; 

2015-02-13

ELSEVIER BV

JRC88851

2212-0955,   

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212095514000583,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC88851,   

10.1016/j.uclim.2014.07.010,