Facilitating Advanced Urban Meteorology and Air Quality Modelling Capabilities with High Resolution Urban Database and Access Portal Tools - Meteorological and Air Quality Models for Urban Areas - page 6

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 1.3 Simulations of surface ozone using CMAQ driven by UCP (a) and No-UCP (b) versions
of MM5 (see Fig. 1.2) and (c) differences between simulations (at 2100 GMT on August 30, 2000)
(See also Colour Plate 3 on page 172)

The development of NUDAPT represents a promising resource to stimulate the
addressing of many of the emerging problems in urban areas. NUDAPT provides
a platform for accessing and developing data and for sharing information with the
user community. Primary data in NUDAPT will include physical and morphologi-
cal data prepared and collected under various conventional and unconventional sys-
tems. The preparation of NUDAPT daughter products which are closely directed to
urban gridded modelling applications will need to consider various map projections
that are used in typical meteorological and air quality modelling applications. Due
to the multiple scales of applications that will potentially be used in various stud-
ies, it is important that the NUDAPT include methodologies for re-projecting and
re-gridding these daughter products in a way that conserves their properties for gen-
eralized applications. Currently, a database for Houston is serving as the NUDAPT
prototype. Eventually, the goal for NUDAPT is to be extended to all major urban
areas within the United States; ultimately, there is nothing to preclude this concept
to extend beyond the USA.

Disclaimer: The research presented here was performed under the Memorandum
of Understanding between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the
U.S. Department of Commerce s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra-
tion (NOAA) and under agreement number DW13921548. This work constitutes a
contribution to the NOAA Air Quality Program. Although it has been reviewed by
EPA and NOAA and approved for publication, it does not necessarily reflect their
policies or views.

References

Burian, S. J., S. W. Stetson, W. Han, J. Ching, and D. Byun (2004). High-resolution dataset of
urban canopy parameters for Houston, Texas. Preprint proceedings, Fifth Symposium on the
Urban Environment, AMS, 23-26 August, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 9 pp.
Chen, F., M. Tewari, H. Kusaka, and T. L. Warner (2006). Current status of urban modeling in
the community Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model. Sixth AMS Symposium on the
Urban Environment, Atlanta GA, January 2006.