Urban Street-Scale Climate Simulations for Sustainability, Health, and
Social Equity
Abstract
Intra-urban fine-scale data and models are needed to understand
infrastructure interactions that shape equity and health related to
extreme heat, cold and precipitation events. Fine-scale data are needed
to address spatial equity at the scale of city blocks or block groups
where income and race data are available. We conducted nested
simulations with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model that
cover parts of the US state of Minnesota — one of the fastest warming
states in the contiguous US. The first two nests at 5km and 1km
horizontal resolution cover the counties of southern Minnesota, with the
outer 5km grid also covering some counties in the neighboring states
Iowa and Wisconsin. Within the 1km inner grid, we created two additional
nests. The third grid covers the metropolitan region of the Twin Cities
Minneapolis and Saint Paul at 200m resolution. Within this grid, we
created a fourth nest over a 4x4km neighborhood in downtown Minneapolis
that includes the campus of the University of Minnesota at 40m
resolution. All model nests have 82 vertical levels. Lateral input data
were acquired from the global Coupled Forecast System (CFS) analysis at
30km horizontal resolution. The boundary conditions consist of
high-resolution land use data including vegetation types, urban
fraction, building heights and shapes. The input data were specifically
designed by the Remote Sensing and Geospatial Analysis Laboratory at the
University of Minnesota and cover the whole Twin Cities Metro Area
(TCMA) at 1m horizontal resolution. This dataset was derived from a
multi-temporal composite of aerial imagery from the summer of 2015 and
fall of 2009-2011, and lidar data of 2011 and 2012. The vertical
accuracy of the lidar data meets or exceeds 12.5cm root mean square
error (RMSE). The results of our model simulations show remarkable
fine-scale climate responses to changes in vegetation cover and albedo
that are going to be used for various urban planning projects.