Characterization of Local Climate Zones Using ENVI-met and Site Data in the City of Al-Ain, UAE

Abstract

The rapid urbanization of the UAE, including medium sized cities like Al Ain City, has a significant relationship to local micro-climatic change. Al-Ain city in the southeast of the UAE and was originally an oasis. It has a hot and arid climate with a very dry and hot summer. The climate of the city is affected by the desert areas of red sand and the eastern Rocky Mountains. The local micro-climatic evolution can be studied and tracked using the local climate zone (LCZ) classification map. The districts of Al Ain are classified based on different factors, including surface cover and surface temperature, which were analysed using WUDAPT (World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools) software. The LCZ map is based on highresolution satellite images, which were used to classify regions based on building morphology and district pattern. The LCZ map results were compared with CFD (computational fluid dynamic) models that were simulated using ENVI-met software tool. The CFD models were optimized and validated based on on-site surveys and information taken from the local authorities, while the boundary conditions were validated using site measurements. Both models were analysed over the spring and summer seasons. Based on the results provided from WUDAPT and ENVI-met, a higher temperature was observed in the densest areas (downtown) and lower temperatures in the green zones (park, city date farms) and the result precision was higher in the colder season (autumn in this case).

LCZ Generator: A Web Application to Create Local Climate Zone Maps

“…This development will in addition accelerate the key aim of WUDAPT, that is "to capture consistent information on urban form and function for cities worldwide that can support urban weather, climate, hydrology and air quality modeling" (Ching et al, 2018(Ching et al, , 2019. Examples of modeling systems currently using LCZ information are the Surface Urban Energy and Water Balance Scheme (SUEWS, Alexander et al, 2016), ENVI-met (Bande et al, 2020), the urban multi-scale environmental predictor (UMEP, Lindberg et al, 2018), MUKLIMO_3 (Bokwa et al, 2019;Gál et al, 2021), COSMO-CLM and the WUDAPT-TO-COSMO tool (Wouters et al, 2016;Brousse et al, 2019Brousse et al, , 2020bVarentsov et al, 2020), and the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF, Brousse et al, 2016;Hammerberg et al, 2018;Wong et al, 2019;Patel et al, 2020;Zonato et al, 2020). While WRF currently uses the WUDAPT-to-WRF tool to ingest LCZ information (Brousse et al, 2016), its next release expected in spring 2021 should offer this compatibility by default (A. Zonato, personal communication).…”

Evaluating the impact of material service life on embodied energy of residential villas in the United Arab Emirates

“…The rapid urbanisation of the United Arab Emirates over the last 50 years has had a significant effect on various aspects of the country. From major cities such as Abu Dhabi and Dubai to others such as Al Ain and Sharjah, the country has witnessed urban development at an unprecedented scale which has impacted its microclimate (Bande et al, 2020), urban heat island (Mohammed et al, 2020), water resources (Shanableh et al, 2018), and social costs related to desalination, carbon, and power (Saleh et al, 2019). This is particularly noteworthy, as approximately nine out of ten people in the UAE live in urban areas (Statista, 2021).…”

“…The rapid urbanisation of the United Arab Emirates over the last 50 years has had a significant effect on various aspects of the country. From major cities such as Abu Dhabi and Dubai to others such as Al Ain and Sharjah, the country has witnessed urban development at an unprecedented scale which has impacted its microclimate (Bande et al. , 2020), urban heat island (Mohammed et al.…”

A global map of local climate zones to support earth system modelling and urban-scale environmental science

“…The LCZ scheme is a core element of the WUDAPT project to provide consistent urban data to support climate science (Ching et al, 2018(Ching et al, , 2019, and many modelling systems nowadays ingest the LCZ typology, such as e.g. the Surface Urban Energy and Water Balance Scheme (SUEWS, Alexander et al, 2015Alexander et al, , 2016, UrbClim (Verdonck et al, 2018(Verdonck et al, , 2019bSharma et al, 2019;Gilabert et al, 2021), the Vertical City Weather Generator (Moradi et al, 2022), ENVI-met (Middel et al, 2014;Lyu et al, 2019;Bande et al, 2020), the urban multi-scale environmental predictor (UMEP, Lindberg et al, 2018), MUKLIMO_3 (Bokwa et al, 2019;Matsaba et al, 2020;Gál et al, 2021), COSMO-CLM and the WUDAPT-TO-COSMO tool (Wouters et al, 2016;Brousse et al, 2019Brousse et al, , 2020bVarentsov et al, 2020;Van de Walle et al, 2021), the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF, Brousse et al, 2016;Hammerberg et al, 2018;Molnár et al, 2019;Pellegatti Franco et al, 2019;Wong et al, 2019;Mu et al, 2020;Zonato et al, 2020;Patel et al, 2020;Hirsch et al, 2021;Patel et al, 2022), and the WUDAPT-TO-WRF tool (Demuzere et al, 2022c). Most studies focus on individual cities, with the work of Patel et al (2022) being an exception as it uses the European LCZ map (Demuzere et al, 2019a) to simulate a continental-scale heat wave event.…”