A growing majority of the world’s population lives in cities. Urban systems are complex, including interactions between tightly connected human and natural systems both within city boundaries and between cities and the surrounding rural environment. Understanding how cities function is critical to monitoring, managing and improving the urban environment and the environment of the entire globe. The urban environment is also highly heterogeneous, often including striking disparities in the living conditions of and environmental quality experienced by the urban population. Understanding the causes of these disparities, and working towards improving the health, economy and living conditions for disadvantaged populations is a critical challenge in urban systems. The Earth Talks series on Urban Systems Science will bring a series of leading researchers engaged in this increasingly important area of earth, environmental and social sciences research.
Abstract
To understand and quantify effects of urban form on local microclimate and consequent changes in building energy use, high-resolution urban parameter inputs to numerical simulation models are needed for both historical and projected climate simulations. We have developed a new capability for generating these parameters at sub-kilometer resolution for neighborhoods and cities as they exist today, and we are working on a generative approach for projecting future urbanization within the context of different shared socioeconomic pathway projections. These inputs have been tested for their impact on local and regional meteorology within a two-way coupled nested mesoscale numerical weather model for Oak Ridge, TN, Chicago, IL, and Washington, DC. These tests show that changes in the morphology of even a small newly added development to a neighborhood affects not only its own microclimate but also the microclimate of the original neighborhood, and that different resolutions of morphological feature inputs can result in different representations of the heterogeneity of meteorological variables across regions simulated at the same model resolution affecting results pertaining to the assessment of neighborhood vulnerability to climate impacts. This new capability is being applied to research conducted by the Integrated Multisector Multiscale Modeling SFA and the Southwest Integrated Field Laboratory modeling team.
In addition to outlining some of the details of this work, this talk will establish the context into which this research fits with respect to studies of global climate change and urban sustainability. Class discussion regarding paths forward in these focus areas and what commonalities and/or collaborative opportunities this research may have with ongoing work in the Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative Urban Integrated Field Laboratory will be welcome.
Bio
Melissa Allen-Dumas is a Research Scientist in the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division (CSED) of Oak Ridge National Laboratory where she is a member of the Leadership Team for the Climate Change Science Institute. She holds a PhD in Energy Science and Engineering and a MS in Environmental Engineering. Her publications span global modeling and analysis of atmospheric species transport, statistical and dynamical downscaling of various climate model output, and regional modeling and analysis of direct and indirect effects of climate change on building energy demand, electricity generation, and transmission. She currently participates in two multi-institutional urban microclimate-focused projects in which the effects of global climate change on urban sustainability are central.