Assimilating Anthropogenic Heat Flux Estimated from Satellite Data in a Mesoscale Flow Model

The need for comprehensive prognostic meteorological models is paramount in various applications related to environmental assessment. The inclusion of urban land cover in the computational domain in mesoscale models introduces new challenges for accurately incorporating the complex interactions related to the dynamical and thermal effects of the urban canopy. Aiming to address these requirements, a new urban surface scheme was introduced in a mesoscale meteorological model incorporating parameterisations of the area-averaged effects of drag and turbulence production as well as an improved representation of the surface heat and moisture fluxes. In addition, an advanced data assimilation module was implemented for enabling the self-consistent estimation of anthropogenic heat fluxes on the basis of representative satellite data, as well as the introduction of resulting forcing in the surface energy budget. The enhanced version of the model was evaluated in two mesoscale applications covering the greater urban areas of Paris, France and Athens, Greece. The model was evaluated over the course of three periods of strong anticyclonic conditions, enabling a better assessment of the influence of urban effects. The results confirmed that the urban surface module enhancements led to a significant improvement of model performance. Finally, the assimilation of anthropogenic heat data in the model provided an improved capability of reproducing the observed spatial and temporal variation of surface temperature.