CAREER: Investigation of Regional Land-Atmosphere Interactions in Semi-arid Cities Using the WRF-Noah-Urban Canopy Model

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CAREER: Investigation of Regional Land-Atmosphere Interactions in Semi-arid Cities Using the WRF-Noah-Urban Canopy ModelTerri Hogue, University of California, Los AngelesAbstractThis award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Future climate extremes will significantly impact populations in semi-arid regions, exacerbating regional water supply problems and increasing energy demand. Metropolitan regions currently support around 50% of the world?s population and 80% of the population of North America. Many of these urban centers are in semi-arid or arid regions that are particularly sensitive to climate extremes (heat-waves, anomalous precipitation, droughts, etc.). With probable declines in precipitation, increasing probability of extreme events, and already depleted stocks in many large storage systems (e.g., Colorado River), there are serious water policy issues that require sophisticated modeling of climate-surface interactions to better understand and predict future impacts. The adaptability of water resource management strategies to potential climate extremes is limited by a reliance on the predictive capabilities of current General Circulation Models (GCMs) which are poorly resolved at the regional scale. Objectives of the current proposal are to advance high-resolution modeling and understanding of land-atmosphere interactions in semi-arid cities, and ultimately, facilitate improved climate predictions in these critical and highly-populated regions. Proposed work will center on the development of a high-resolution, land-atmosphere-urban canopy model that is integrated (forced and calibrated) with an extensive set of ground-based observations as well as remotely-sensed products of surface energy and water fluxes. The coupled land-atmosphere model will be run over two large urban domains, Los Angeles, CA and Phoenix, AZ for a range of atmospheric conditions (normal heat conditions, extreme heat waves, anomalous precipitation, etc.). Studies on the sensitivity of the urban climate to surface ?greenness? will also be undertaken to evaluate the related benefits and tradeoffs of evaporative cooling (water demand) versus urban heat (energy demand). The ultimate goal is to build a transferable regional-scale model capable of predicting the impacts of anthropogenic and climate disturbance on water-stressed landscapes. The proposed project makes substantial use of advances in remote sensing platforms and provides for potential data assimilations mechanisms that can be readily integrated into comprehensive management and solution systems for metropolitan regions. The integration of observational networks and environmental curriculum at Los Angeles school districts, facilitated through the NSF UCLA SEE-LA GK-12 program, will help foster environmental awareness and build the foundation for an educated workforce capable of engineering solutions and mitigating impacts. Public outreach and education are critical to reducing the impact of humans on the Earth?s surface, and the integrated activities proposed in this CAREER award will help build a scientifically literate and informed citizenry, while also answering critical water and energy demand questions for large population centers.