THESIS | Urban properties tool

This tool creates the urban properties data required as input to the Community Earth System Model's (CESM's) Community Land Model (CLM) component. CLM requires urban properties for four city types in each of 33 regions. The properties include data such as the percentage of area covered by buildings, building height, roof and wall thermal conductivity, and the emissivity and albedo of roofs, walls, and roads.

The tool works by referencing a file containing the thermal properties of individual materials (eg. the thermal conductivity, heat capacity, emissivity, and albedo of air, concrete, and wood), and then referencing files specifying how such materials are combined to construct walls, roofs, and roads, from which the thermal properties of various types of roofs, walls, and roads are computed. Finally, the code references files that describe urban canyon morphology and the types of roofs, walls, and roads used for four city types (only three of which are actively used in CLM) in each of 33 regions.

Released code

Source code and documentation are available on github here

Input datasets are available on DASH here

Citation for Model Code

Oleson, K.W., and J. Feddema, 2019: Parameterization and surface data improvements and new capabilities for the Community Land Model Urban (CLMU), JAMES, 11, doi:10.1029/2018MS001586.

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