Study on Heat Environment Changes in Seoul Metropolitan Area Using WRF-UCM: A Comparison between 2000 and 2009

Abstract

This study examined the impact of change of land-use and meteorological condition due to urbanization on heat environment in Seoul metropolitan area over a decade (2000 and 2009) using Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)-Urban Canopy Model (UCM). The numerical simulations consist of three sets: meteorological conditions of (1) October 2000 with land-use data in 2000 (base simulation), (2) October 2009 with land-use data in 2000 (meteorological condition change effect) and (3) October 2009 with land-use data in 2009 (both the effects of land-use and meteorological condition change). According to the experiment results, the change of land-use and meteorological condition by urbanization over a decade showed different contribution to the change of heat environment in Seoul metropolitan area. There was about 1 degrees C increase in near-surface (2 m) temperature over all of the analyzed stations due to meteorological condition change. In stations where the land-use type changed into urban, large temperature increase at nighttime was observed by combined effects of meteorological condition and land-use changes (maximum 4.23 degrees C). Urban heat island (UHI) over 3 degrees C (temperature difference between Seoul and Okcheon) increased 5.24% due to the meteorological condition change and 26.61% due to the land-use change. That is, land-use change turned out to be contributing to the strengthening of UHI more than the meteorological condition change. Moreover, the land-use change plays a major role in the increase of sensible heat flux and decrease of latent heat flux.