Ultra-high-resolution WRF input data, including Local Climate Zones, for highly-resolved urban-scale modeling in Greece

The HEAT-ALARM Urban Morphology and Environment Database (UMED) provides ultra-high-resolution data that characterize the landscape, form and function of the five highest populated cities in Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Larissa, Patras, Heraklion) for integration in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, versions 4.3-4.4.1 (Skamarock et al., 2021), in order to enable the highly-resolved numerical weather prediction (NWP) over the targeted urban areas as part of the weather forecasting component of the project's heat-health warning system (HHWS). These data include: (a) terrain elevation based on the 3-arc-sec (~ 90 m) horizontal grid resolution SRTM (shuttle radar topography mission) data, version 4.1 (Jarvis et al., 2008), (b) land use/land cover (LU/LC) at 100 m spatial resolution, constructed by combining CORINE land cover data (CLC – Feranec et al., 2016) and Local Climate Zone (LCZ – Stewart and Oke, 2012) classification, and (c) city-specific surface and urban canopy properties (e.g., width of streets, albedo of roofs) for each LCZ class, assigned in look-up tables (URBPARM_LCZ.TBL). Along with UMED, the GEOGRID.TBL.ARW_HEAT-ALARM is provided for assisting the WRF implementation with the above data.

Considering that such finely detailed data have been incorporated in modeling studies only in Athens so far (e.g. Giannaros et al., 2014; Agathangelidis et al., 2019; Giannaros et al., 2018, 2023), the development and distribution of UMED in the framework of HEAT-ALARM constitutes an important step towards the creation of an open-access national urban dataset in Greece that can be used for accurately describing and modeling the urban environments under various applications.

More information on the data generation and their use within the WRF-urban modeling framework can be found at: https://osf.io/p2qrd. 

Compared to the previous version, this version includes minor bug fixes related to the look-up tables providing the surface and urban canopy properties (URBPARM_LCZ_HEAT-ALARM.zip).

References

Agathangelidis, I., Cartalis, C., Santamouris, M., 2019. Integrating Urban Form, Function, and Energy Fluxes in a Heat Exposure Indicator in View of Intra-Urban Heat Island Assessment and Climate Change Adaptation. Clim. . https://doi.org/10.3390/cli7060075

Feranec, J., Soukup, T., Hazeu, G., & Jaffrain, G. (Eds.), 2016. European Landscape Dynamics: CORINE Land Cover Data (1st ed.). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315372860

Giannaros, C., Agathangelidis, I., Papavasileiou, G., Galanaki, E., Kotroni, V., Lagouvardos, K., Giannaros, T.M., Cartalis, C., Matzarakis, A., 2023. The extreme heat wave of July–August 2021 in the Athens urban area (Greece): Atmospheric and human-biometeorological analysis exploiting ultra-high resolution numerical modeling and the local climate zone framework. Sci. Total Environ. 857, 159300. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159300

Giannaros, C., Nenes, A., Giannaros, T.M., Kourtidis, K., Melas, D., 2018. A comprehensive approach for the simulation of the Urban Heat Island effect with the WRF/SLUCM modeling system: The case of Athens (Greece). Atmos. Res. 201, 86–101. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2017.10.015

Giannaros, T.M., Melas, D., Daglis, I.A., Keramitsoglou, I., 2014. Development of an operational modeling system for urban heat islands: An application to Athens, Greece. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 14, 347–358. https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-14-347-2014

Jarvis, A., Reuter, H.I., Nelson, A., Guevara, E., 2008. Hole-filled SRTM for the globe, version 4, available from the CGIAR-CSI SRTM 90 m database (http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org) 

Skamarock, W.C., Klemp, J.B., Dudhia, J., Gill, D.O., Liu, Z., Berner, J., Wang, W., Power, J.G., Duda, M.G., Backer, D.M., Huang, X.Y., 2021. A Description of the Advanced Research WRF Model Version 4.3. NCAR Technical Note (NCAR/TN-556+STR), Boulder, Colorando, USA. Available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.5065/1dfh-6p97

Stewart, I.D., Oke, T.R., 2012. Local climate zones for urban temperature studies. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 93, 1879–1900. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00019.1