Street-level Modelling of the Effect of Climate Adaptation Measures on Air Quality

Abstrakt

Cities play an important role regarding potential climate change impacts. Urban areas are often vulnerable and poorly prepared to respond to climate change impacts, such as heat waves. Within UrbanAdapt project we aim to perform high-resolution street-level modelling to evaluate different adaptation measures which are orientated to lower the temperature in the streets during hot summer days. The heterogeneity of urbanized land surface leads to a need for a very fine resolution when modelling air flows and temperature near to the surface. We have chosen the atmospheric model PALM as a tool for our simulations. PALM is a LES model which includes parametrizations of many atmospheric processes (e.g. land surface, plant canopy, solar radiation and convective processes) and also enables to involve pollutant dispersion. On the other hand, the parametrization of building surface energy balance is not included in the model. To account for the realistic implementation of urban canopy processes in complex urban geometry we enhanced PALM model including some of the most important urban canopy mechanisms. In order to evaluate the new module, we performed a field experiment, during which temperature of building facades and road surface on Prague crossroad were measured with infrared camera, during a summer heat wave episode. Newly developed module will be used to estimate the effects of different adaptation measures (planting tree alleys, changing wall paint colors), on air quality and thermal comfort of city inhabitants.