Newsletter Article By Matei Georgescu

There is an excellent informative newsletter article in The March 2010 issue of Urban Climate News by Matei Georgescu of Stanford. It is titled

Climatic effects of an urbanizing metropolis: the rise of Phoenix

The abstract reads

“The global effects of land-use and land cover change (LULCC) on increased emissions of greenhouse gases have received considerable research attention. Despite rapidly increasing global urban population, the local and regional LULCC impact resulting from modification of the surface energy and water balance, such as that associated with rapidly urbanizing locales, has received commensurately less interest. In this brief note we summarize the climatic effects of LULCC over one of the most rapidly expanding urban regions of the U.S., the Greater Phoenix metropolitan area. By means of high-resolution (2-km grid spacing) numerical modeling experiments using the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS), we present evidence illustrating the importance of landscape change on meteorology and climate over a semi-arid urban complex whose population is expected to grow for decades to come.”

The entire article is worth reading.