Effect of urbanization on gust wind speed in summer over an urban area in Eastern China

Abstract

Abstract Previous studies have extensively examined effects of urbanization on mean wind speed, but few studies were aimed at gust wind speed, while large wind gust could cause safety and economic hazard to a variety of activities. In this study, the effect of urbanization on the gust wind speed in Nanjing, China is assessed using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with a parameterization of the gust wind speed. The WRF simulations are run for the summer period of 2013 with the underlying surface before and after the urbanization. The results indicate that although the mean wind speed is reduced, the gust wind speed in the urban areas is increased significantly due to the enhanced friction velocity and less atmospheric stability induced by the urbanization, while the contribution of deep convection is relatively small. The gust wind speed increases more in the nighttime (0.6–0.9 m s−1) than in the daytime (less than 0.3 m s−1), since the turbulence is enhanced more in the nighttime than in the daytime after the urbanization. The probability distribution shows that the increase of gust wind speed is mainly between 0.0–0.5 m s−1 in the urban areas. In different urban land categories, the increase of the gust wind speed is larger in the commercial or industrial areas than in high-intensity and low-intensity residential urban areas. Averagely, the gust wind speed in the entire city after the urbanization increases by 0.02, 0.36 and 0.19 m s−1 for the daytime, nighttime and daily mean, respectively.