Collaborative Research: Interactions of Urban Systems with Storms and Heatwaves, and Resulting Impacts

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This award provides funding to advance fundamental understanding of urban processes as a function of land surface properties, atmospheric chemistry, and human adaptive choices designed to reduce impacts of storms and heatwaves over urban areas. The study will focus on Chicago, New York, and Denver regions that vary in geography, climatology, urban characteristics, and urbanization processes. The resulting improvement in the understanding of urban processes is ultimately expected to improve the quality of life for vulnerable urban communities impacted by more frequent and extreme storms and heatwaves events. This project will help evaluate the impact of green infrastructure choices and future urban expansion. The use of satellite datasets for storm and heatwave characterization, data assimilation, and validation will ensure portability to other urbanized areas across the world with limited in-situ and radar observations as well as cities with similar climatic conditions. The project will disseminate project findings through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at conferences and workshops, webinars to citizens and city administrators, and social media for global reach. The project will train a postdoc and two graduate students to be next-generation atmospheric scientists with interdisciplinary expertise in climate model development, hydrometeorological data analysis, and urban sustainability. This project will utilize a combination of numerical model development activities, model enhancements, and new measurement techniques from space and the earth’s surface to characterize the nonlinear effects of land cover, urban morphology, geometry, scale, and aerosol heterogeneity on the urban boundary layer processes impacting storms and heatwaves. This project will contribute to the following objectives: (i) analyze the effects of interactions between the atmosphere and intra-urban land surface properties and characteristics on storms and heatwaves, (ii) analyze the contribution of urban aerosols on storms and heatwaves, and (iii) analyze the impacts of changing urban landscapes due to human development and adaptation choices. The project will also articulate atmospheric chemistry interactions due to urban aerosol heterogeneity and intra-urban land surface processes related to convergence and convection that modify storms and heatwaves. The weather-chemistry linkages using new model development activities and model enhancements will likely improve weather forecasting capabilities for cities. Project techniques and resulting findings will also serve as a new paradigm for integrated studies for sustainable and resilient urban systems, especially in evaluating how future urbanization and urban climate change adaptation strategies like green and cool roofs will impact storms and heatwaves over urban areas.This collaborative project is co-funded by the Physical and Dynamic Meteorology and Environmental Sustainability programs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.