Urban Effect on Sea-Breeze-Initiated Rainfall: A Case Study for Seoul Metropolitan Area

Abstract

We examined the sea-breeze-initiated rainfall in the Seoul Metropolitan area (SMA) on 6 July 2017 using the weather research and forecasting (WRF) model. The model captures the arrival of the sea breeze front (SBF), the development of afternoon rainfall in the SMA, and the location of the sea-breeze-initiated maximum rainfall in the northeastern SMA reasonably well but overestimates the subsequent rainfall. We conducted sensitivity tests to better understand the urban effect on the sea-breeze-initiated rainfall event. Through factor separation analysis, we first examined the explicit role of sea and urban effect on sea-breeze-initiated rainfall. The results show that the interaction of sea and urban effects cause rainfall in the northwest and northeast of the SMA, indicating that both urban heat island circulation (UHIC) and sea breeze play an important role in the study case’s rainfall. We further examined the relative role of urban roughness and anthropogenic heat on the sea-breeze-initiated rainfall through factor separation analysis. Both anthropogenic heat and urban roughness play a role in increasing precipitation in the northeastern area of the SMA, with a larger contribution of anthropogenic heat than urban roughness. The relationship between low-level convergence at the SBF and urban factors is discussed.