Influence of ground surface characteristics on the mean radiant temperature in urban areas

Lindberg, F., Onomura, S. and Grimmond, C. S. B. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3166-9415 (2016) Influence of ground surface characteristics on the mean radiant temperature in urban areas. International Journal of Biometeorology, 60 (9). pp. 1439-1452. ISSN 1432-1254 doi: 10.1007/s00484-016-1135-x

Abstract/Summary

The effect of variations in land cover on mean radiant surface temperature (Tmrt) is explored through a simple scheme developed within the radiation model SOLWEIG. Outgoing longwave radiation is parameterised using surface temperature observations on a grass and an asphalt surface, whereas outgoing shortwave radiation is modelled through variations in albedo for the different surfaces. The influence of surface materials on Tmrt is small compared to the effects of shadowing. Nevertheless, altering ground surface materials could contribute to a reduction on Tmrt to reduce the radiant load during heat-wave episodes in locations where shadowing is not an option. Evaluation of the new scheme suggests that despite its simplicity it can simulate the outgoing fluxes well, especially during sunny conditions. However, it underestimates at night and in shadowed locations. One grass surface used to develop the parameterisation, with very different characteristics compared to an evaluation grass site, caused Tmrt to be underestimated. The implications of using high resolution (e.g. 15 minutes) temporal forcing data under partly cloudy conditions are demonstrated even for fairly proximal sites.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/58036
Identification Number/DOI	10.1007/s00484-016-1135-x
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	Springer
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