Progress in Urban Meteorology :A Review

Abstract

This paper reviews the progress made in urban meteorology over the past few decades. The focus is on the impact of urban surfaces on the overlying atmosphere along the conventional meteorological frameworks. Section 1 details the difliculties in generalizing urban surfaces in a meteorological sense because of surface diversity, and considers whether conventional similarity law is applicable. Section 2 describes the characteristics of urban surfaces as the bottom boundary of the atmosphere and includes a discussion of land surface parameters and the resultant surface energy partitioning. Section 3 explains characteristics of the urban atmosphere, including temperature fields, local circulations and rainfall. Section 4 describes recent progress in numerical modeling and promising new technologies, thus revealing a possible future direction for urban meteorological studies.