Quantifying the Cooling Potential of Urban Greening in an Arid Coastal City Using High-Resolution LCZ–WRF Simulations

Urban heat stress poses a growing challenge for rapidly expanding cities in hyper-arid regions, where extreme summer temperatures, limited vegetation, and strong land–sea interactions amplify thermal discomfort and energy demand. While urban greening is widely promoted as a heat mitigation strategy, its effectiveness in desert coastal environments remains insufficiently quantified, particularly at neighborhood scales relevant for urban planning. In this study, we assess the thermal impacts of hypothetical urban greening scenarios in Doha, Qatar, using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model configured with Local Climate Zones (LCZs) and a coupled Building  Energy Model (BEM). Simulations are performed at high spatial resolution (400 m) over the metropolitan area of Doha using a nested WRF configuration for a representative summer period in July 2024. Urban morphology is explicitly represented through LCZ-based land-use classes, enabling a realistic description of spatial heterogeneity in building density and surface properties. Three greening scenarios are designed by systematically increasing vegetated cover within urban LCZs by 25%, 50%, and 75%, and are evaluated relative to a baseline configuration. Model performance is assessed using surface meteorological observations from both urban-core and near-coastal stations, showing satisfactory agreement for 2-meter temperature and wind speed. Results indicate that urban greening leads to spatially heterogeneous but consistent reductions in near-surface air temperature, with the strongest cooling occurring during nighttime hours and in densely built LCZs. Nighttime temperature reductions of more than five degrees Celsius are simulated under the most aggressive, transformative scenario. Daytime responses are weaker but remain non-negligible in selected urban zones. Analysis of Cooling Degree Hours (CDH) further reveals substantial reductions in cumulative thermal exposure, highlighting the potential of greening to alleviate heat stress and cooling energy demand in desert cities. Overall, this study demonstrates the added value of combining LCZ-based urban classification with high-resolution urban climate modeling to evaluate nature-based heat mitigation strategies in hyper-arid coastal environments. The findings provide quantitative guidance for climate-resilient urban planning in Doha and other rapidly urbanizing desert cities.