Doctoral Dissertation Research: Examination of Local-Scale Spatial Variability of Heat Fluxes Across an Urban Area: Integration of Measurements, Remote Sensing, and Modeling

城市能源消耗和地表改造通过改变与大气的能量、质量和动量交换，创造了独特的城市气候模式。这些过程与城市热岛、污染物的迁移和扩散等现象有关，对于理解城市对天气和气候的影响至关重要。本博士论文研究将通过气象测量，遥感和数值模拟相结合，研究城市景观和大气之间的能量转移。这种方法的组合产生了对本地规模（约1公里，例如社区）的交换的准确测量，并将其扩展到城市规模。以前的研究，主要是在北美进行的，是有限的短期活动或缺乏直接的测量，以评估模型。研究将在波兰的罗兹进行;之所以选择罗兹，是因为它经历了与已研究过的地点不同的季节性气候状况，冬季释放了大量的人为热量，城市的建筑风格（密度和形态）与北美城市不同，但在中欧的许多城市中是典型的。这项研究将加强罗兹现有的长期测量，并通过在不同建筑密度和土地利用的地区增加直接测量，解决对城市内部变化缺乏了解的问题。这些测量数据集将为校准交换过程的遥感和数字模型提供基础。这两种方法所预测的通量的模式和大小可以解释的背景下，新兴的理解热交换的城市景观，鉴于直接观测这一大范围内是不可能的。城市地区，虽然小的土地总表面积，正在增长，并包含越来越大的份额世界人口。因此，城市与大气的相互作用对人类的健康、安全和舒适产生了不成比例的影响。此外，城市效应超越了城市的边界，对区域和更大范围的大气条件和气候产生影响。随着计算能力的提高，数值天气预报、空气污染和长期气候模型现在的空间分辨率更高，可以明确地将城市地区包括在内。这项研究将直接有助于这种模式的发展，通过产生一种方法来研究当地的城市影响，以及提供数据，以评估预测。 作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立的研究生涯。

Urban energy consumption and land-surface modification create distinct patterns of urban climates by altering the exchange of energy, mass and momentum with the atmosphere. These processes are linked to phenomena such as the urban heat island, the transport and dispersion of pollutants and are fundamental to understanding urban impacts on weather and climate. This doctoral dissertation research will investigate the transfer of energy between the urban landscape and the atmosphere through a combination of meteorological measurements, remote sensing and numerical modeling. This combination of methods generates accurate measurement of exchanges over the local-scale (~1 km, e.g. neighborhoods) and extends them to the scale of a city. Previous studies, conducted mostly in North America, were limited by short-duration campaigns or lacked direct measurements by which to evaluate models. The study will be conducted in Lodz, Poland; selected because it experiences a different seasonal climatic regime to those sites already studied, large amounts of anthropogenic heat are released in the winter-time, and the building style (density and morphology) of the city is distinct from North American cities but typical of many cities in central Europe. This research will enhance existing long-term measurements in Lodz and address the lack of understanding of within urban variability by adding direct measurements in areas with differing building densities and land-uses. These sets of measurements will provide the basis for calibrating remote sensing and numerical models of the exchange processes. The patterns and magnitudes of fluxes predicted by the two approaches can be interpreted in the context of emerging understanding of heat exchange across the urban landscape given that direct observations on this large an extent are not possible.Urban areas, although small in terms of total land surface area, are growing and contain an increasingly large share of the world's population. Thus urban-atmosphere interactions disproportionately impact humans with implications for human health, safety and comfort. Moreover, urban effects extend beyond the boundaries of cities, with implications for regional and larger-scale atmospheric conditions and climates. With increases in computing capacity, numerical weather forecasting, air pollution and long-term climate models now run with greater spatial resolution and can explicitly incorporate urban areas. This research will contribute directly to the development of such models, by producing a methodology by which to study local urban impacts as well as providing data against which to evaluate predictions. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.