Urban climate modelling, anywhere, at any time

In recent years it has become increasingly evident that the solutions to climate changes, both mitigation
and adaptation, must pay greater attention to the places where most people on the planet live. Moreover,
the demand for weather services at urban scales is increasing in line with the ability to model
atmospheric processes at these finer scales; these advances could herald more resilient cities with the
evidence to support planning and design at appropriate time scales. In this context, the lack of
information on urban landscapes and the dearth of urban observations represent a major obstacle to
progress.
This work explores the possibility to create the scientific infrastructure needed to incorporate climate
knowledge into urban decision-making quickly. By combining globally available but locally appropriate
datasets (global map of LCZs, ERA5, Copernicus global land cover layers) and cloud computing (Google
Earth Engine), we created a seamless, holistic and user-friendly SUPY-based urban modelling framework
that can be applied anywhere at any time. Results are evaluated using the Urban Plumber flux tower
observations and a large unique database crowdsourced weather-station observations. The wider
purpose of the project is to develop a pathway to the creation of a universal ‘toolbox’ for baselining
climate-related data for use in any city.