Category Archives: Urban meteorology

Modelling city structure for improved urban representations in weather and climate models

Posted on 26 October, 2023 by sdriscoll

By: Meg Stretton Urban areas are home to an increasingly large proportion of the world’s population, with more people living in cities than rural areas since 2007. These large population densities mean more people are vulnerable to extreme weather events, … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate modelling, Urban meteorology | Leave a comment

Including Human Behaviour in Models to Understand the Impact of Climate Change on People

Posted on 20 February, 2023 by danaallen

By Megan McGrory In 2020 56% of the global population lived in cities and towns, and they accounted for two-thirds of global energy consumption and over 70% of CO2 emissions. The share of the global population living in urban areas … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Climate change, Climate modelling, Urban meteorology | Leave a comment

Improving Hydrological Predictions Of Land System Models

Posted on 7 December, 2020 by danaallen

By: Thibault Hallouin Given the existence of feedbacks between the Earth’s atmosphere and the Earth’s surface, hydrological knowledge (e.g. soil moisture and open water available for evaporation and plant transpiration) is as critical to atmospheric scientists, as meteorological knowledge is … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Hydrology, Urban meteorology | Leave a comment

People are in the cities – how could we provide the weather climate information they need?

Posted on 19 October, 2020 by danaallen

By: Sue Grimmond Climate services provide climate information to help individuals and organizations make climate smart decisions. Climate services work by integrating high quality meteorological data (temperature, rainfall, wind, soil moisture and ocean conditions); as well as maps, risk and vulnerability … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Urban meteorology, Weather forecasting | Leave a comment

Do urban heat islands provide thunderstorm predictability?

Posted on 28 September, 2020 by danaallen

By: Suzanne Gray  The UK and the rest of western Europe experienced a heatwave in the middle of August 2020 with temperatures exceeding 30oC in Reading. Fortunately for us this was broken by a heavy downpour on the afternoon of … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Predictability, Thunder Storms, Urban meteorology | Leave a comment

Trading Evil lasers for MAGIC Doppler lidars

Posted on 4 November, 2019 by danaallen

By: Janet Barlow  Lasers may have an evil reputation in Hollywood, but they are very good for observing urban meteorology. We recently took part in the MAGIC project field campaign in London, deploying a Doppler lidar to measure wind-speed around … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundary layer, Climate, Urban meteorology | Leave a comment

The sky is the limit – How tall buildings affect wind and air quality

Posted on 29 April, 2019 by danaallen

By: Denise Hertwig Based on current UN estimates, by 2050 over 6.6 billion people (68% of the total population) will be living in cities. Across the world, tall (> 50 m height) and super-tall (> 300 m) buildings already define … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundary layer, Climate, Urban meteorology | Leave a comment

SuPy: An urban land surface model for Pythonista

Posted on 18 March, 2019 by danaallen

By: Ting Sun Python is now extensively employed by the atmospheric sciences community for data analyses and numerical modelling thanks to its simplicity and the large scientific Python ecosystem (e.g., PyData community). Although I cherish Mathematica as my native programming … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundary layer, Climate, Climate modelling, Urban meteorology | Leave a comment

Remodelling Building Design Sustainability from a Human Centred Approach (Refresh) project overview

Posted on 4 February, 2019 by danaallen

By: Hannah Gough In 2014, 54 % of the world’s population resided in an urban area and this is projected to rise to 66 % by 2050 (United Nations, 2014). It is also estimated that 90 % of people’s time in … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundary layer, Climate, Urban meteorology | Leave a comment

The Role of Synoptic Meteorology on UK Air Pollution

Posted on 14 August, 2017 by Stephen Burt

By Chris Webber In the past year the issue of air pollution within the UK has been elevated, driven by the loss of life that it causes (in 2013 > 500,000 years of UK lives lost due to air pollution … Continue reading →

Posted in Aerosols, Atmospheric chemistry, Boundary layer, Environmental hazards, Urban meteorology | Tagged | Leave a comment