Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
34
°
N
33
°
N
34
°
N
33
°
N
113
°
W
112
°
W
111
°
W
113
°
W
112
°
W
111
°
W
Urban built-up
Urban xeric residential
Urban mesic residential
Irrigated agriculture
Grassland, shrubland, evergreen needleleaf forest, deciduous forest
Open water
Bare soil
FIGURE 21.1
Topography contours (from 0 to 3000 m interval 250 m) and land use/land cover for 1973, 1985, 1998,
2005produced by WRF's preprocessing system for the inner modeling domain (2
×
2 km grid resolution) based on Landsat
MSS, TM, and ETM
image-derived land use/cover data and three urban land use/cover classes. In order to emphasize the
urban land use changes the colors are grouped together for the rural land use classes (grassland, shrubland, deciduous
broadleaf forest, evergreen needle leaf forest). The extent of the area is ∼ 240 × 198 km.
+
reducing mean flow (Brown, 2000). Urban development has led
to a reduction of the already relatively weak night-time winds by
1to2ms
−
1
and therefore a reduction of advection of cooler air
into the city.
Based on the simulations, we conclude that land use and land
cover characteristics that evolved over the past 35 years in the
Phoenix metropolitan region have had a significant impact on
near-surface air temperatures occurring during EHEs in the area.
Future intensification and temporal expansion of EHE episodes
is also possible due to global warming. Although the interactions
of urbanization and global climate change and their effect on
the severity of summer EHEs in the region were not investigated
here, it can be assumed that the region will be highly sensitive to
any additional warming.
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