The influence of a land use change scenario on climatic suitability for mosquitoes in the Netherlands

Land use is an important factor in the distribution of mosquitoes. In the Netherlands, numerous climate adaptation plans are being developed for the coming years, with changes in vegetated or water areas, affecting e.g. the local humidity and temperature. These are known to be important parameters for the life cycle of mosquitos. Moreover, the development of wetland areas near cities might have an effect on bird populations and play a role in the spread of the west nile and usutu disease. Therefore, it is important to get an understanding of how land use change affects the local weather.

We use the regional climate model Harmonie Climate (HCLIM).  We simulate the weather of 2018-2022 at 1 km resolution in the Netherlands, in two configurations: one control and one with an extreme land use scenario. This scenario is the combination of two existing scenarios. One is the ssp5 scenario constructed by Dellar et al. (2024) and one is based on the map of possibilities for water storage by Climate Adaptation Services. Together, these scenarios constitute a significant increase in urban area and an extreme increase in lake area.

We already have some output for the year 2018. Over and near the areas where lakes were created, we see an increase in minimum temperature. Furthermore, the relative humidity in these areas is on average lower with less extremes. The turbulent fluxes over the lakes are higher during the night and lower during the day, compared to the fluxes over land in the control experiment.

We aim to find an explanation for these results by exploring the physics of lakes, and especially by looking at the evolution of parameters such as water surface temperature, mixed layer temperature, mixed layer depth in HCLIM.