Summer in the City: High Resolution Urban Climate Modelling

In a first step, planning authorities need reliable and locally relevant information, including projections of future climates and fine spatial resolutions in city quarters or street canyons. To date, such building-resolving tools are unavailable.

Aiming to enable adequate data acquisition for urban development and planning, air quality control, and action design for climate change mitigation and adaptation, the German research program “Urban Climate Under Change” or [UC]² works on developing an innovative urban climate model that is able to resolve buildings and trees at spatial grids of 10 m and finer. Its new model PALM-4U is based on the large eddy simulation (LES) model PALM and thus applicable for studies that address turbulence and its influence on urban weather, climate and air quality. PALM-4U is currently being tested and validated using existing and newly acquired data from long-term observations, measurements during intense observation periods, and wind-tunnel experiments. In collaboration with relevant stakeholders, the model is furthermore tested with respect to its applicability as an instrument to provide a scientifically sound and practical data to address the above-mentioned challenges.

The German Center for Research and Innovation (DWIH) invites stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds, such as scientists, engineers, city planners and policy makers, to join experts from the [UC]² research program for a roundtable. The goal of this meeting is to exchange ideas and approaches on climate modeling and urban data analyses, the impacts and implications for climate policy and city planning, as well as to discuss the adaptability of the [UC]² model for a metropolitan region such as New York City.

Project Members:

Prof. Dr. Günter Groß 
Professor of Environmental Meteorology and Climatology
Leibniz University of Hanover

Dr. Ute Fehrenbach
Senior scientist at the Chair of Climatology
Technical University of Berlin

Dr. Björn Maronga
Junior research group leader at the Institute of Meteorology and Climatology
Leibniz University of Hanover

Prof. Dr. Dieter Scherer
Professor of Climatology
Director the Chair of Climatology
Technical University of Berlin

Bettina Steuri
Research associate in the Department of Networking and Marketing Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS)

Dr. Sarah Wiesner
Research fellow at the Meteorological Institute (MI)
University of Hamburg

This event is by invitation only.