Exploring Urban Climate Seasonal Dynamics over Cyprus with WRF Model: Implications of Urban Parameterizations

Urbanization has become a dominant factor in shaping local climate dynamics, manifesting profound impacts on the environment and human well-being. This effect is even more important over areas that are expected to become vulnerable to climate change in the future. Cyprus, which is located in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME) region, is considered as a climate change “hot-spot”.

In this study, we employ the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional climate model driven by ERA5 reanalysis dataset coupled with different available urban parametrization schemes to simulate prevailing climatic conditions over the EMME and the island of Cyprus. The main objective of this research is to investigate the performance of -different in complexity- urban canopy models in simulating urban heat island over our region of interest, the capital city of Nicosia. The outcome of this investigation is the definition of the most suitable model set-up to be used over the area of Cyprus.

The simulations are performed at 1 km horizontal resolution for the year 2021, a year that Cyprus experienced a prolonged heatwave during summer, with 12 consecutive days of temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius. We examine the seasonal variability of urban climate properties in Nicosia during this year.

The outcomes of this study provide valuable insights into the complex interactions between urbanization and climate. Understanding how different urban parametrization influence seasonal climate dynamics and selecting the best performing scheme aims in better representation of the local climatic conditions which can be further used in mitigation and adaptation assessments of the impacts of the ongoing global climate change.