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Here we gave an overview of the recent development of physical
approaches for the representation of urban areas in regional
atmospheric models, input data, and urban characterization
along with the methods to derive them from remotely sensed data
from various platforms. The review of meteorological, climate
and air quality modeling studies for cities, in which those recent
model developments were applied, showed an improvement of
the quality of the simulations in terms of capturing meteorolog-
ical fields and phenomena and subsequently air quality.
AnexamplewasgiveninhowLULCareusedinregionalatmo-
spheric modeling. The potential contribution of LULC changes
to daily minimum and maximum near-surface air temperatures,
during four recent summer EHEs in the Phoenix metropolitan
area, were studied using WRF with Noah Urban Canopy Model
and remotely sensed LULC classification data for 1973, 1985,
1998 and 2005. Simulations were carried out for each EHE with
the four LULC classification data sets. Results show that urban
land use characteristics that have evolved over the past ∼ 35 years
in the Phoenix metropolitan region have had a significant impact
on extreme near-surface air temperatures occurring during EHEs
in the area. Simulated maximum daytime and minimum night-
time temperatures were notably higher due to the conversion
of agricultural to urban land use (by

∼

2-4Kand8-10K,
respectively). The conversion of desert to urban land use led to a
significant increase in night-time air temperatures (6-7 K) and
no significant changes in daytime temperatures.

Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the National
Science Foundation under Grants No. ATM-0710631, No. GEO-
0816168, No. DEB-0423704, Central Arizona - Phoenix Long-
Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER). Any opinions, findings
and conclusions or recommendation expressed in this material
are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the National Science Foundation.

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