Urban Climate Observation over Enschede
Possibility (to adapt the topic to) for M-SE requirements (multidisciplinary ): The topic in itself is rather technical, however, Spatial Engineering students may in addition analyse how the observations relate to citizen experiences (In fact quite a number of complaints were received by the local authorities during the 2018 summer) and whether there are links with anthropogenic activities.
Additional remarks: A link is present with the oterh MSc topic “Urban Heat Stress Determination for Enschede”, such that co-operation with the fellow student is possible, although there is no such necessity.
The WRS department of ITC faculty has developed urban climate observation flux tower sites and, in cooperation with the Creative Technology group at the EWI faculty, the City Council of Enschede and the Regional Water Authority “Vechtstromen”, a climate observation sensor network, which is used for monitoring the drivers and characteristics of the urban heat. The flux tower sites, utilizing eddy-correlation and scintillation techniques, observe the turbulent fluxes locally in the city center and integrated over the entire city, which is unique in The Netherlands for the water fluxes. You will be working on the analysis and evaluation of the observations of the emission of water and heat over Enschede.
Methodology proposed in this MSc research topic: You will be analyzing and modelling observations of water and heat exchange over Enschede for the extremely dry and hot summer of 2018. This research relates both to the temporal as well as the spatial scale. Questions pertaining to the temporal aspect are; what was the development of the fluxes over the summer, are there relations with standard meteorological observations and do we observe typical patterns in daily behaviour, such as working days and weekend? The spatial aspect will be analyzed through so-called footprint analysis and how these relate to wind-direction, landuse and local flux observations. No specific fieldwork is envisaged. However, work visits to the city local authorities and observation sites are integral part of the research.
References
Barlow J., Best M., Bohnenstengel S. I., Clark P., Grimmond S., Lean H., Christen A., Emeis S., Haeffelin M., Harman I. N., Lemonsu A., Martilli A., Pardyjak E., Rotach M. W., Ballard S., Boutle I., Brown A., Cai X., Carpentieri M., Coceal O., Crawford B., Sabatino S. D., Dou J., Drew D. R., Edwards J. M., Fallmann J., Fortuniak K., Gornall J., Gronemeier T., Halios C. H., Hertwig D., Hirano K., Holtslag A. A. M., Luo Z., Mills G., Nakayoshi M., Pain K., Schlünzen K. H., Smith S., Soulhac L., Steeneveld G., Sun T., Theeuwes N. E., Thomson D., Voogt J. A., Ward H. C., Xie Z. & Zhong J. (2017) Developing a research strategy to better understand, observe, and simulate urban atmospheric processes at kilometer to subkilometer scales. Bulletin American Meteorological Society 98, ES261–ES264. doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0106.1
Crawford B., Grimmond C. S. B., Ward H. C., Morrison W. & Kotthaus S. (2017) Spatial and temporal patterns of surface–atmosphere energy exchange in a dense urban environment using scintillometry. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 143, 817-833. doi: 10.1002/qj.2967