eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

List of figures
Figure 2.1: Scales of interest when studying urban areas (Inspired by Harman (2003)) ............. 13
Figure 2.2: A schematic representation of the vertical layers of the urban boundary layer at the
local scale and the representative flow (from Britter and Hanna, 2003).......................... 14
Figure 2.3: A schematic representation of the regional influence of the urban surface on the
boundary layer. ‘PBL’ stands for the planetary boundary layer, and ‘UBL’ for the urban
boundary layer. Modified from a figure in Oke (1997)....................................................... 16
Figure 2.4: Fraction of urban land cover in the London region...................................................... 39
Figure 2.5(a-f): Built-up area of London in 1800 (a), 1850 (b), 1880 (c), 1914 (d), 1939 (e) and
1958 (f). From Mogridge et al. (1997). ................................................................................... 43
Figure 2.6: Built up area for London in 1981, from Mogridge et al. (1997). The red box shows
the domain used in Chapters 6 and 7 for the scenarios representing past and future
urbanisation. ................................................................................................................................44
Figure 2.7: Urban classes taken from Chandler (1965) ..................................................................... 46
Figure 3.1: Three dimensional representation of the METRAS ARAKAWA C grid. Taken
from Schlünzen et al. (1996) .................................................................................................... 56
Figure 3.2: A diagram showing how the METRAS mesoscale grid interacts with the BEP
urban grid..................................................................................................................................... 67
Figure 3.3: A schematic representation of the urban grid, in which W is the street width, B is
H
the building width, IU is the centre of a vertical model level, Fiu represents the flux of
H V
a quantity through the horizontal surfaces with the area Siu , and FIU represents the
V
flux of a quantity through the vertical surfaces with the area of SIU . (Taken from
Martilli et al. 2002, page 267).................................................................................................... 68
Figure 3.4: Percentage of the “Meadows” land cover class (left) and the “Mixed forest” land
cover class (right) for each grid cell in the domain .............................................................. 78
Figure 3.5: Percentage of the “Continuous urban” land cover class (left) and the “Suburbanrural
developed” land cover class (right) for each grid cell in the domain ...................... 78
Figure 3.6: Locations of Met Office weather stations in the South-East of England (taken from
www.metoffice.gov.uk) ............................................................................................................. 84
Figure 4.1: Vertical profiles of potential temperature (K) at x=0, y=0 as computed by the Rural
(yellow), Orig (green) and urban_BEP (black) simulations at 04:00 for the second day of
simulation..................................................................................................................................... 89
Figure 4.2: Vertical profile of wind speed (ms -1 ) at x=0, y=0 as computed by the Rural (yellow),
Orig (green) and urban_BEP (black) simulations at 04:00 for the second day of
simulation..................................................................................................................................... 91
Figure 4.3: Vertical profile of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) (m 2 s -2 ) at x=0, y=0 as computed
by the rural (yellow), Orig (green) and urban_BEP (black) simulations at 04:00 for the
second day of simulation. ......................................................................................................... 92
Figure 4.4: Horizontal cross section at z=10 m (a) and z=30 m (b) of potential temperature
(K) as computed by the urban_BEP simulation at 04:00 for the second day of
simulation..................................................................................................................................... 93
Figure 4.5: Horizontal cross section at z=10 m (a) and 30 m (b) of wind speed (ms -1 ) and
direction as computed by the urban_BEP simulation at 04:00 for the second day of
simulation. The arrows represent the magnitude and direction of the horizontal wind
and the shaded plot represents the magnitude of the horizontal wind speed (ms -1 ). .... 94
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