Local testbed for urban applications
Dr. Vera Schemann, Nils Eingrüber
Meteorology, Geography
Motivation
Climate change poses significant challenges for urban high-density areas like the Rhine area – or even more specific Cologne. To investigate and predict urban heat island effects, cooling wind systems or extreme and local precipitation, the resolution of current numerical weather prediction models is not fine enough. Furthermore, operational weather stations are usually outside cities due to standardization requirements for the setups, causing data scarcity within the urban fabric. During the last years, we gained experience in running the atmospheric part of the ICON model on a resolution reaching up to 50m e.g. for a region covering Cologne (Meteorology), as well as establishing a dense weather station network (180 sensors) within the city and running microclimatic model simulations with ENVI-met at 1m building resolving scales (Geography). Within this project, we would like to bring these two developments together by focusing on 2 main aims:
- creating infrastructure for continuous simulations and data storage/exchange
- prototyping the combination of the two different types of model simulations, and the local sensor measurements to investigate the potential of follow-up proposals (e.g. DFG)
Furthermore, we would like to use the existing tools and new tools to reach, involve, and inform a broader community. As a first step we will visualize the suggested and existing datasets in attractive and easily accessible ways to be shown on websites and other (social) media formats. As a second step, we will use tools like meteotrackers (devices that can be mounted on bikes or cars to measure temperature and humidity) to measure transects across the city. This can a) connect the established measurement regions and b) offer a new way to be compared to the ICON simulations and investigate how the transects can be captured. These measurements can be combined with public events for joined measurements (citizen science) as well as to be used in a planned sustainability seminar (SoSe 2026, in cooperation with Ulrich Löhnert) at the University of Cologne with students. So two further aims are:
- creating and providing attractive visualizations of the current (and additional) datasets
- involving students and citizens into measurement attempts – enabling further outreach
Plan
- Setup of daily (semi-operational) ICON simulations for Cologne on a new computer, and simulation of the same time periods with the microclimate model ENVI-met
- Defining and creating easily accessible datasets
- Prototype possible research questions and a combination of ICON simulations, local urban measurements, remote sensing data, and building-resolving ENVI-met model simulations
- Outreach by producing attractive visualizations and involving citizens and students in measurement campaigns.
