Prathap Ramamurthy

Contribution of impervious surfaces to urban evaporation

Observational data and the Princeton urban canopy model, with its detailed representation of urban heterogeneity and hydrological processes, are combined to study evaporation and turbulent water vapor transport over urban areas. The analyses focus on periods before and after precipitation events, at two sites in the Northeastern United States. Our results indicate that while evaporation from concrete pavements, building rooftops, and asphalt surfaces is discontinuous and intermittent, overall these surfaces accounted for nearly 18% of total latent heat fluxes (LE) during a relatively wet 10 day period. More importantly, these evaporative fluxes have a significant impact on the urban surface energy balance, particularly during the 48 h following a rain event when impervious evaporation is the highest. Thus, their accurate representation in urban models is critical. Impervious evaporation after rainfall is also shown to correlate the sources of heat and water at the earth surface, resulting in a conditional scalar transport similarity over urban terrain following rain events.

Observations of the Effects of Atmospheric Stability on Turbulence Statistics Deep within an Urban Street Canyon

Abstract Data obtained in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, during the Joint Urban 2003 atmospheric dispersion study have been analyzed to investigate the effects of upstream atmospheric stability on turbulence statistics in an urban core. The data presented include turbulent heat and momentum fluxes at various vertical and horizontal locations in the lower 30% of the street canyon. These data have been segregated into three broad stability classification regimes: stable (z/L > 0.2), neutral (−0.2 < z/L < 0.2), and unstable (z/L < −0.2) based on upstream measurements of the Monin–Obukhov length scale L. Most of the momentum-related turbulence statistics were insensitive to upstream atmospheric stability, while the energy-related statistics (potential temperatures and kinematic heat fluxes) were more sensitive. In particular, the local turbulence intensity inside the street canyon varied little with atmospheric stability but always had large magnitudes. Measurements of turbulent momentum fluxes indicate th...

Influence of Subfacet Heterogeneity and Material Properties on the Urban Surface Energy Budget

AbstractUrban facets—the walls, roofs, and ground in built-up terrain—are often conceptualized as homogeneous surfaces, despite the obvious variability in the composition and material properties of the urban fabric at the subfacet scale. This study focuses on understanding the influence of this subfacet heterogeneity, and the associated influence of different material properties, on the urban surface energy budget. The Princeton Urban Canopy Model, which was developed with the ability to capture subfacet variability, is evaluated at sites of various building densities and then applied to simulate the energy exchanges of each subfacet with the atmosphere over a densely built site. The analyses show that, although all impervious built surfaces convert most of the incoming energy into sensible heat rather than latent heat, sensible heat fluxes from asphalt pavements and dark rooftops are 2 times as high as those from concrete surfaces and light-colored roofs. Another important characteristic of urban areas—t...

Heatwaves and urban heat islands: A comparative analysis of multiple cities

The recent International Panel on Climate Change report predicts the highly urbanized Northeastern U.S. to be at high risk to heat waves. Since urban residents and infrastructure are known to be highly vulnerable to extreme heat, the goal of this paper is to understand the interaction between the synoptic-scale heat wave and the city-scale urban heat island (UHI) effects. The study also qualitatively analyzes the primary factors that contribute to UHIs by comparing their intensities in different cities with distinct geo-physical characteristics. Our results, generated by using the Weather Research and Forecasting model augmented with advanced urban surface parameterizations, confirm that the amplitude of UHI is related to the physical size of the city. However, the results suggest that cities of comparabale sizes might interact differently with heat waves: in New York City; Washington, DC; and Baltimore (but not in Philadelphia) the regular UHI was amplified more strongly during heat waves compared to smaller cities. The results also establish that the pattern of UHI in different cities, its variability, and its interaction with heat waves are inherently linked to dynamic factors.

On the correlation of water vapor and CO2: Application to flux partitioning of evapotranspiration

The partitioning of evapotranspiration (ET) between plant transpiration (Et) and direct evaporation (Ed) presents one of the most important and challenging problems for characterizing ecohydrological processes. The exchange of water vapor (q) and CO2 (c) are closely coupled in ecosystem processes and knowledge of their controls can be gained through joint investigation of q and c. In this study we examine the correlation of water vapor and CO2 (Rqc) through analyses of high frequency time series derived from eddy covariance measurements collected over a suburban grass field in Princeton, NJ during a two-year period (2011-2013). Rqc at the study site exhibits pronounced seasonal and diurnal cycles, with maximum anticorrelation in June and maximum decorrelation in January. The diurnal cycle of Rqc varies seasonally and is characterized by a near-symmetric shape with peak anticorrelation around local noon. Wavelet and spectral analyses suggest that q and c are jointly transported for most eddy scales (1-200 m), which is important for flux-variance ET partitioning methods (e.g. Scanlon and Sahu [2008]). The diurnal cycle of the transpiration fraction (ratio of Et to total ET) exhibits an asymmetric diurnal cycle, especially during the warm season, with peak values occurring in the afternoon. These ET partitioning results give similar diurnal and seasonal patterns compared with numerical simulations from the Noah Land Surface Model using the Jarvis canopy resistance formulation. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Turbulent Transport of Carbon Dioxide over a Highly Vegetated Suburban Neighbourhood

The complexities involved in the turbulent transport of

Toward understanding the behavior of carbon dioxide and surface energy fluxes in the urbanized semi-arid Salt Lake Valley, Utah, USA

{\mathrm {CO}}_{2}

The joint influence of albedo and insulation on roof performance: An observational study

CO2 in an urban area are investigated using data from a 40-m-tall flux tower located in suburban Salt Lake Valley, UT, USA. We found that the transport of