urbisphere - ASSURE: Bristol: Across-Scale processeS in URban Environments on our way to coupling dynamic cities and climate

Worsening local and global environmental conditions from climate change  affect most of the world’s urban population. To develop sustainable, resilient and healthy environments in the face of these challenge requires support from improved modelling crossing neighbourhood-influenced scales of next-generation weather (0.1–1 km) and climate (2-10 km) forecast models need to resolve. Hence, there is a pressing need is to establish which processes should be parametrised and which resolved, to capture urban heterogeneity adequately in space and time. Two crosscutting challenges are associated with heterogeneity of the arrangement of urban obstacles (i.e. urban form) and anthropogenic activities (i.e. urban function).

To address Street (100 m) to Neighbourhood (1 km), to City (10 km), to Region (100 km) scales,. we combine field observations and interviews (RWO), high-resolution numerical simulations (LES, ABM, NWP) and wind tunnel (WT) experiments to advance theoretical understanding and inform development of new parametrisations for larger-scale urban meteorological models. Field work and modelling focus on Bristol, as its physical scale and urban geography allow whole-city approaches, whilst including a range of complex terrain features.. The Bristol project is a continuation of year-long urbisphere field campaigns in Berlin, and Paris, and is complemented by other urbisphere medium-sized city campaigns in complex-terrain in Freiburg (Germany) and Heraklion (Greece).

In this talk, we provide an overview of the WT, LES and NWP modelling and RWO observations published and undertaken so far, in this ongoing project.