Sue Grimmond
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
Approximately half of the world's population, over three billion people,
lives in urban areas. By 2025, the United Nations predicts that this number
will double, and that the proportion of the global population who are urban
residents will rise to two-thirds. Land surface and atmospheric alteration by
urbanization leads to the development of distinct urban climates. Ultimately
these urban climate effects are due to differences in the exchanges of heat,
mass, and momentum between the city and its pre-existing landscape. The
understanding, prediction, and mitigation of urban climate effects thus are
intricately tied to knowledge of surface - atmosphere exchanges in urban
environments. In this talk, results from measurement and modeling studies
conducted in a range of urban areas in North America, Europe and Africa will
be used to consider the variability of surface-atmospheric exchanges both
within and between cities, and their fundamental controls.