ICUC12-289, updated on 21 May 2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/icuc12-289
12th International Conference on Urban Climate
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
High resolution WRF simulations of a heat wave event in Rome (Italy) with Local Climate Zones
Serena Falasca1,2, Margherita Erriu1, Stefania Argentini3, Erika Brattich4, Giampietro Casasanta3, Andrea Cecilia3, Annalisa Di Bernardino1, and Anna Maria Siani1
Serena Falasca et al.
  • 1Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
  • 2Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment (ENEA), Rome, Italy
  • 3CNR, Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC), Rome, Italy
  • 4Department of Physics and Astronomy “Augusto Righi”, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

In the context of a changing climate, the increase in frequency and intensity of heat waves alter the urban climate with much warmer temperatures to which city dwellers are subjected (Urban Heat Island, UHI) with severe consequences for public health and society.

A comprehensive knowledge of the distribution of meteorological variables during heat wave events is essential for: i) assessing the areas with the highest risk for human health and ii) exploring the cooling potential of urban heat island mitigation techniques.

In this regard, numerical models such as the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model play a key role as they guarantee thermodynamic fields with high spatial-temporal resolution and with continuous spatial coverage unreachable with weather stations networks. Additionally, WRF runs can simulate the so-called "what-if" scenarios, where the effects of one or more UHI mitigation techniques can be assessed. Recently, a WRF configuration with a horizontal resolution up to 500 m has been implemented for the metropolitan area of ​​Rome (Italy) thanks to the inclusion of the Local Climate Zones provided by the WUDAPT database (https://www.wudapt.org/).

In this work, a heat wave that occurred in Rome during the exceptionally hot year 2022 was simulated testing different planetary boundary layer schemes and urban schemes available in WRF. The numerical results were compared with the observations provided by the ASTI-Network (13 weather stations) showing a good agreement for the different Local Climate Zones: average bias mostly smaller in module than 0.5°C, RMSE about 1°C and Pearson correlation coefficient higher than 0.95 for air temperature; average bias mostly lower in module than 1m/s, RMSE about 1m/s and Pearson correlation coefficient higher than 0.8 for wind speed. These statistical parameters reveal that this tool is appropriate also for the evaluation of the effectiveness of mitigation techniques.

How to cite: Falasca, S., Erriu, M., Argentini, S., Brattich, E., Casasanta, G., Cecilia, A., Di Bernardino, A., and Siani, A. M.: High resolution WRF simulations of a heat wave event in Rome (Italy) with Local Climate Zones, 12th International Conference on Urban Climate, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 7–11 Jul 2025, ICUC12-289, https://doi.org/10.5194/icuc12-289, 2025.

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