Urbanization Impact on Regional Climate and Extreme Weather: Current Understanding, Uncertainties, and Future Research Directions

Urban environments lie at the confluence of social, cultural, and economic activities and have unique biophysical characteristics due to continued infrastructure development that generally replaces natural landscapes with built-up structures. The vast majority of studies on urban perturbation of local weather and climate have been centered on the urban heat island (UHI) effect, referring to the higher temperature in cities compared to their natural surroundings. Besides the UHI effect and heat waves, urbanization also impacts atmospheric moisture, wind, boundary layer structure, cloud formation, dispersion of air pollutants, precipitation, and storms. In this review article, we first introduce the datasets and…

• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy

  Awards: 76RL01830, AC05-76RL01830, DE-AC05-76RL01830, DE-AC05
• B
  Battelle

  Awards: AC05-76RL01830, DE-AC05, DE-AC05-76RL01830
• OO
  Office of Science

  Award: DE-AC05-76RL01830
• BA
  Biological and Environmental Research

  Awards: AC05-76RL01830, 76RL01830, DE-AC05-76RL01830
• PN
  Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

  Awards: DE-AC05-76RL01830, 76RL01830