Urbanisation of The UK Met Office unified model

The urban scale in particular, brings unique challenges to the modelling community due to the extreme variations in the height of surface elements and the varying radiative properties of manmade materials used in cities. These variations contribute to the increased difficulty of accurate modelling of air quality in urban areas.

The Unified Model (UM) is the UK Met Office’s leading edge weather forecast model. It has only recently been run at resolutions high enough to study urban features in details and it has not been optimised to run at high resolutions over urban areas.

This research aims to identify and implement improvements to the UM mesoscale model for urban air quality applications. The heat wave period of August 2003 is being used as a base scenario to assess possible modifications.

Some urbanisation of the UM has already been implemented by the UK Met Office, in the form of an ‘Urban Canopy’. This allows for storage and emission of heat in manmade (specifically concrete) surfaces. This heat sink will be tested to see if it is set at an appropriate value for the London based scenario. A range of other options to improve the urbanisation of the model will be investigated.

Acknowledgements & collaborations:

This PhD studentship has been funded by NCAS/Weather and the UK Environment Agency. The UK Met Office and NCAS/CMS are thanked for providing help on UM-related issues