Challenges in Representing Human Dimension in Earthsystem Models

Description

Presented by Fei Chen
Deputy Director
Hydrometeorology Applications Program
Research Applications Laboratory
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

ABSTRACT

Urbanization and agriculture are well-known examples of how human activities inadvertently modify weather and climate. Advancing the understanding of the nexus among food, energy, and water systems has recently emerged as a new science frontier, and the research community started modeling urbanization and agricultural management in earth-system models to develop an integrated modeling tool for investigating relevant land-atmosphere interactions and agriculture and urban sustainability issues. However, despite those efforts, there are substantial discrepancies in simulating land-atmosphere interactions over human-modified surfaces. This paper uses recent efforts in developing an integrated urban-agriculture-system model in the regional-climate Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to highlight the challenges for earth-system models to capture cross-scale interactions between urbanization, agricultural management, hydrology, and climate systems. We will give an overview of urban canopy modeling in WRF, its expanded capability to represent urban mitigation strategies (e.g., green- and cool-roofs), and impacts of air-conditioning electric loads on city air temperature.

BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Fei Chen is the deputy director of the Hydrometeorology Applications Program of Research Applications Laboratory at National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO. Dr. Chen’s research focuses on land atmospheric interactions and their impacts on boundary layer structures and precipitation. His research examined feedback between soil moisture, vegetation conditions, and landscape change, and regional summer precipitation. Dr. Chen has developed and implemented the Noah land surface and hydrology model for MM5 and WRF and has led an international effort to develop the integrated WRF-urban modeling system. His recent work includes improving land-surface modeling and data assimilation for Tibetan region. Dr. Chen completed his B.S. at Nanjing Institute of Meteorology, China, M.S. and Ph.D. at Blaise Pascal University, France, and postdoctoral training at Rutgers University before joining NCAR as a scientist in 1997. He is an elected American Meteorological Society (AMS) fellow for 2013 and has been awarded the Helmut E. Landsberg Award from AMS.

Hosted by Professor Qi Li