The Need for Urban‐Resolving Climate Modeling Across Scales

Abstract

Increasing urbanization, evolving urban landscapes, and growing populations require an accurate representation of urban areas and urban processes at microscale, regional, and global scales and their feedback across the scales. Important urban processes should be represented in climate models, and current approaches used are discussed. We discuss strategies for urban‐resolving climate research to capture the effect of climate on urban regions and the non‐linear urban processes on climate. Advancing urban‐resolving climate modeling will take us closer to capabilities that can truly capture relevant natural and human components.Increasing urbanization, evolving urban landscapes, and growing populations require an accurate representation of urban areas and urban processes at microscale, regional, and global scales and their feedback across the scales. Here we discuss important urban processes that should be represented in climate models and current approaches used by the atmospheric science and urban modeling communities to represent these across space‐time scales. We discuss some strategies for urban‐resolving climate research to capture the effect of climate on urban regions and the non‐linear urban processes on regional and global climate. Here we reason that advancing urban‐resolving climate modeling will take us closer to capabilities that can that can truly capture relevant natural and human components. An accurate representation of urban areas and urban processes at microscale, regional, and global scales and their feedback across the scales is needed Advancing urban‐resolving climate modeling will take us closer to the concept of Earth System Models as a model of systems The needed research direction will take time to conceive and achieve and will require concentrated efforts