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Modeling of urban heat island and its impacts on thermal circulations in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, China

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Abstract

Through regulating the land–atmosphere energy balance, urbanization plays an important role in modifying local circulations and cross-border transport of air pollutants. The Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) metropolitan area in northern China is frequently influenced by complex atmospheric thermal circulations due to its special topography and geographic position. In this study, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model combined with remote sensing is used to explore the urbanization impacts on local circulations in the BTH region. The urban heat island (UHI) effect generated around Beijing and Tianjin shows complex interactions with local thermal circulations. Due to the combined effects of UHI and topography, the UHI circulation around Beijing and valley breeze at the southern slopes of Yan Mountain are coupled together to reinforce each other. At the coastal cities, the increased land/sea temperature gradient considerably accelerates the sea breeze along Bohai Bay and moves the sea breeze front further inland to reach as far as Beijing. This study may lay a foundation for the better understanding of air pollutant dispersion on complex terrain.

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Acknowledgments

This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation for Young Scholars of China (41605115), the Major Research plan of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91544230), the General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41575145, 41475122 and 41675143), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (020714380021), and the EU 7th Framework Marie Curie Actions IRSES project (REQUA; PIRSES-GA-2013-612671). The numerical calculations in this paper have been done on the Blade cluster system in the High Performance Computing & Massive Data Center (HPC&MDC) of School of Atmospheric Science, Nanjing University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Mengmeng Li, Tijian Wang, Min Xie, Bingliang Zhuang, Shu Li & Yong Han

  2. Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center, Beijing, 100048, China

    Nianliang Cheng

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  1. Mengmeng Li
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  2. Tijian Wang
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  3. Min Xie
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  4. Bingliang Zhuang
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  5. Shu Li
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  6. Yong Han
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  7. Nianliang Cheng
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Correspondence to Tijian Wang.

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Li, M., Wang, T., Xie, M. et al. Modeling of urban heat island and its impacts on thermal circulations in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, China. Theor Appl Climatol 128, 999–1013 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-016-1903-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-016-1903-x

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