As the most evident example of land use and land cover change, urban areas play a fundamental role in local to large-scale planetary processes, via modification of heat, moisture, and chemical budgets. With rapid urbanization ramping up globally it is essential to recognize the consequences of landscape conversion to the built environment. Given the capability of cities to serve as first responders to global change, considerable efforts are currently being dedicated across many cities to monitor and understand urban atmospheric dynamics and examine various adaptation and mitigation strategies aimed to offset impacts of rapidly expanding urban environments and influences of large-scale greenhouse gas emissions. 

This session solicits submissions from both the observational and modelling communities examining urban atmospheric and landscape dynamics, processes and impacts owing to urban induced climate change, the efficacy of various strategies to reduce such impacts, and techniques highlighting how cities are already using novel science data and products that facilitate planning and policies on urban adaptation to and mitigation of the effects of climate change. Emerging topics including, but not limited to, urban climate informatics, are highly encouraged.

The CL2.5 Session Solicited/Invited Talk will be given by Prof. Tony Brazel, recipient of the International Association of Urban Climate's Luke Howard Award, the American Meteorological Society's Helmut E. Landsberg Award, Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association of American Geographers' Climate Specialty Group, and the Jeffrey Cook Prize in Desert Architecture from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.