Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Urban Heat Island and Wind Interaction in the Twin Cities During a Summer and Winter
Season
KATIE E. VOITIK
Meteorology Program, Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences, Iowa State University
Mentors: Brian Hornbuckle and Tracy Twine
Abstract
This project investigates how wind speed influences the urban heat island in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul
area, Minnesota, USA. The city was partitioned into four equal quadrants, and the time period looked at was June
August 2013, and December 2012 February 2013. The quadrant that received air flow due to wind from outside
the urban area, called the windward quadrant, should be cooler than the average temperature of the entire urban area,
and stronger winds should lead to a stronger temperature difference. In addition, the degree of influence should be
higher in the winter than in the summer due to an expected greater difference in temperature between urban and
rural areas from snow cover. The dominant wind direction for the Twin Cities was determined and separated into
three different speed categories. For each hour in which the wind was from the dominant wind direction, the overall
urban mean temperature was compared to the windward quadrant mean temperature. On the whole, the quadrant
temperatures were nearly always cooler than the entire city, and for most of the months the degree of influence
increased with the wind speed. While it was observed that winter had a greater effect than the summer, there was no
pattern as the wind speeds increased.
1. Introduction
Urban heat islands occur over a populated
area with a dense network of buildings and humanmade landmarks. The composition of these buildings
act like the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,
absorbing the incoming radiation from the sun and
other energy and emitting longwave radiation to
warm the air in the urban area. Since the amount of
radiation emitted is directly affected by temperature,
the urban area warms up to a few degrees more than
the surrounding rural area. The winter can sometimes
have more of a temperature difference compared to
rural areas based on the snow cover. Since snow is
generally cleared off of buildings and streets, the
albedo of the city is a lot lower than the surrounding
rural area, which is still covered with snow and
reflects more radiation than it absorbs and emits. The
temperature of the rural area would stay cooler as a
result.
1.1 Goals of the research
The purpose of this research project is to
investigate the wind interactions with the urban heat
island in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota area.
It is hypothesized that as winds blow toward the
windward quadrant, the temperature of that specific
quadrant would be cooler than the entire urban area.
In addition, stronger winds would lead to a greater
Average
Low (C)
December
January
February
June
July
-2.7
-4.6
-1.7
26
28.6
-10.9
-13.6
-10.7
14.9
17.8
Average
Precipitation
(mm)
29
23
20
108
103
August
26.9
16.6
109
Figure 2. View of
(mindsmattermn.org).
downtown
Minneapolis
2. Literature Review
According to Schwarz et al. (2012), the
urban heat island can be measured by both land
surface temperatures and ambient air temperatures to
the top of a typical building or tree height, called the
canopy layer. Factors that influence the urban heat
island include meteorological (wind, season, weather)
and the city itself. Radhi and Sharples (2013)
describe how location, geometry, building materials,
and heat emissions all directly correlate with the
strength of the urban heat island. Even vegetation and
bodies of water can be found to have an effect.
Santamouris (2012) describes how the higher
temperatures in the city are due to release of
anthropogenic heat, absorption of radiation, lack of
cooling areas and green land cover, the reduced air
circulation, and impacted ability to emit infrared
radiation back into space.
2.1 Influence on weather systems
Shepherd (2006) discusses how urban areas
can actually change or create precipitation, depending
on certain conditions. He found that gravity waves
often station near the urban heat island. As a result,
convection can occur downstream of the urban area
as well. These can lead to forcing and precipitation
for the urban area. However, Jauregui and Romales
(1996) found the urban heat island can actually
prevent convection from strengthening or even
occurring due to the formation of a low-level
centripetal acceleration in the evening.
3. Experimental Methods
3.1 Data sources
Air temperature data for the MinneapolisSaint Paul, MN, USA was obtained from Dr. Tracy
Twine at the University of Minnesota. The dataset
contains air temperature measurements taken every
15 minutes from June 2011 to the present.
Temperature was measured at nearly 170 sites and
interpolated (co-kriged with impervious surface
satellite data, Smoliak et al. in review) to a grid
spanning from 44.55N to 45.35N, and from
93.80W to 92.75W.
The wind data was obtained through the
Iowa Environmental Mesonet (IEM). Archived data
from ASOS stations for Minnesota were downloaded
from the site, which contained both wind direction in
meteorological degrees and speeds in knots. Twelve
different stations across the Twin Cities and their
surrounding rural areas were obtained for each month
researched in order to get a good sampling area. Two
were taken from the Wisconsin ASOS stations that
were close to the rural area near the Twin Cities.
3.2 Seasons studied
For this study, a summer and winter season
were examined. The summer season was defined as
June through August 2013, and the winter season was
December 2012 through February 2013. The years
available to look at from the temperature data
network had many extremes throughout the summer
occurring, with droughts and floods and heat waves.
2013 was picked due to it being the most average of
all of the options. Similarly, the winter of 2012/2013
was also average in terms of snowfall and
temperature (climate.gov). Using average seasons
would allow the results to be as representative as
possible, and allow little room for error from a
meteorological extreme event.
3.3 Wind analysis
For each ASOS station, wind direction and
speed frequency graphs were created in order to
determine the dominant wind direction for each
month. In meteorological degrees, 0 is north, 90 is
east, 180 is south, and 270 is west. Figures 3 and 4
illustrate a typical August graph for each below.
Figure 5 shows a wind rose graph that was created
for each station as well, in order to cross-compare the
frequency graphs. Any winds that were zero knots
were taken out along with their corresponding
4. Results
4.1 Urban heat islands
Each month was proven to have an urban
heat island. This indicates higher mean temperatures
in the urban area compared to the rural. Figure 8
shows temperature differences for each hour in July.
There are periods in which the rural areas were much
warmer than the city. The negative values do not
seem to occur randomly, but are grouped by certain
days. This pattern was observed in all months.
Figure 7. The boundaries of the temperature
network (black square), the boundaries of the urban
area (red square) and the quadrant boundaries (black
lines) of the Twin Cities (Google Maps).
Figure 8. Urban rural temperatures in C for July 2013. Positive values indicate warmer urban temperatures.
R2
June
July
August
December
January
February
0.997
0.997
0.998
0.998
0.998
0.996
Y
intercept
0.1642
-0.1116
-0.4782
-0.0408
-0.1436
-0.0668
Slope
0.9882
0.9965
1.0087
1.0147
0.9922
1.0041
Calm
-0.028
June
-0.1246
July
0.0283
August
December 0.1908
0.129
January
February 0.1793
Moderate
-0.0467
0.1101
0.1766
0.2935
0.1675
0.1364
Strong
-0.2385
0.3821
0.2023
0.1822
0.2478
0.1990
Calm
-0.0414
Summer
0.1664
Winter
-0.2078
S/W
Difference
Moderate
0.08
0.199
-0.199
Strong
0.1153
0.1449
-0.0296
Calm
December -0.2406
-0.1409
January
February -0.3346
Moderate
-0.3701
-0.301
-0.3049
Strong
-0.2314
-0.3194
-0.2459
6. Conclusions
Overall, the wind did affect the magnitude
of the urban heat island in the Twin Cities. For most
of the months, the quadrant studied is much cooler
than the entire urban area due to the wind advecting
warmer temperature away from this area.
Additionally, it was seen that the magnitude of this
change increases as the wind speed increases for a
majority of the months. While there were some
anomalies, the overall pattern fit the hypothesis quite
well. Finally, the winter season did have more of an
influence compared to the summer, but the
magnitude of this as the winds increased did not have
a distinct pattern.
From Changnons study (1979) about St.
Louis, these results and his findings go quite well
together. He found that convection often occurs
downwind of the urban heat island area. This study
concluded that there is a temperature difference
among windward and leeward urban quadrants.
Therefore, there could possibly be a connection
between this temperature change and the amount of
the convection that occurs and could be the focus of
later study.
If this project was to be repeated in the
future, all of the quadrants for both seasons should be
looked at. This would give even more accuracy to the
conclusions about the temperature and wind
correlations throughout the entire city. In addition,
more ASOS stations should be analyzed to get better
accuracy with what times specific wind speeds were
observed. Other years can be looked at to further
identify a wind speed/temperature pattern. It would
be interesting to look at a year with anomalous
temperatures or weather to see if the same effect is
still observed. Finally, the urban area should be
identified through more than qualitatively observing
the population densities to be more accurate. Using
other cities could be a great study, but a large
temperature data network would need to be
implemented for quite a while.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank many people
for their assistance with this research project. Dr.
Brian Hornbuckle did a wonderful job mentoring the
entire project and checking every step of the process
to make sure everything was running smoothly. Dr.
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