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Impact of high‐resolution sea surface temperature and urban data on estimations of surface air temperature in a regional climate
Author(s) -
Adachi Sachiho A.,
Kimura Fujio,
Takahashi Hiroshi G.,
Hara Masayuki,
Ma Xieyao,
Tomita Hirofumi
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: atmospheres
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-8996
pISSN - 2169-897X
DOI - 10.1002/2016jd024961
Subject(s) - albedo (alchemy) , environmental science , climatology , surface air temperature , sea surface temperature , urban heat island , metropolitan area , mean radiant temperature , daytime , climate model , range (aeronautics) , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , climate change , geography , materials science , geology , oceanography , precipitation , art , archaeology , performance art , composite material , art history
We investigated the impact of using high‐resolution sea surface temperature (SST) data and a sophisticated urban model on the simulation of surface air temperature (SAT) in the Nagoya metropolitan area using a regional climate model. The spatially detailed structure of SST, expressed in high‐resolution SST data, had relatively little impact on SAT. On the other hand, the difference in areal mean value of SST strongly affected SAT across a wide range of land surfaces. When a spatially inhomogeneous distribution was used for the urban fraction and anthropogenic heat, and appropriate physical properties for building materials were given according to the specific urban categories, we achieved significant improvements in both the diurnal range of SAT and its daily mean. Based on a comparison with an additional sensitivity experiment for building albedo, the sophistication of urban fraction and thermal parameters related to building materials had a comparable impact on SAT as presumable building albedo in the daytime, while they indicated a larger impact on the nighttime SAT. We conclude that (1) the areal mean SST is critical rather than its resolution for the climatological average of SAT over the land; (2) the simultaneous refinement of the urban fraction and building material parameters, as well as an appropriate building albedo setting, greatly improves the representation of SAT; and (3) the refinement of areal mean SST and the urban data have the same degree of importance for a better representation of the SAT.