Impact of Anthropogenic Heat Release on Regional Climate in Three Vast Urban Agglomerations in China

We simulated the impact of anthropogenic heat release （AHR） on the regional climate in three vast city agglomerations in China using the Weather Research and Forecasting model with nested high-resolution modeling.Based on energy consumption and high-quality land use data,we designed two scenarios to represent no-AHR and current-AHR conditions.By comparing the results of the two numerical experiments,changes of surface air temperature and precipitation due to AHR were quantified and analyzed.We concluded that AHR increases the temperature in these urbanized areas by about 0.5℃-1℃,and this increase is more pronounced in winter than in other seasons.The inclusion of AHR enhances the convergence of water vapor over urbanized areas.Together with the warming of the lower troposphere and the enhancement of ascending motions caused by AHR,the average convective available potential energy in urbanized areas is increased.Rainfall amounts in summer over urbanized areas are likely to increase and regional precipitation patterns to be altered to some extent.

Increases in Anthropogenic Heat Release from Energy Consumption Lead to More Frequent Extreme Heat Events in Urban Cities

With economic development and rapid urbanization,increases in Gross Domestic Product and population in fastgrowing cities since the turn of the 21st Century have led to increases in energy consumption.Anthropogenic heat flux released to the near-surface atmosphere has led to changes in urban thermal environments and severe extreme temperature events.To investigate the effects of energy consumption on urban extreme temperature events,including extreme heat and cold events,a dynamic representation scheme of anthropogenic heat release(AHR)was implemented in the Advanced Research version of the Weather Research and Forecasting(WRF)model,and AHR data were developed based on energy consumption and population density in a case study of Beijing,China.Two simulations during 1999−2017 were then conducted using the developed WRF model with 3-km resolution with and without the AHR scheme.It was shown that the mean temperature increased with the increase in AHR,and more frequent extreme heat events were produced,with an annual increase of 0.02−0.19 days,as well as less frequent extreme cold events,with an annual decrease of 0.26−0.56 days,based on seven extreme temperature indices in the city center.AHR increased the sensible heat flux and led to surface energy budget changes,strengthening the dynamic processes in the atmospheric boundary layer that reduce AHR heating efficiency more in summer than in winter.In addition,it was concluded that suitable energy management might help to mitigate the impact of extreme temperature events in different seasons.