Improving urban weather, climate and air quality

Climate change is an undeniable reality, and its impacts are already being felt across the globe. However, many parts of the world, particularly developing regions like sub-Saharan Africa, are ill-prepared to adapt to these changes. This lack of preparedness stems from several interconnected factors: Limited access to climate predictions: Many regions in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to reliable and accurate climate predictions, making it difficult for communities to anticipate and plan for future climate-related events. Inadequate adaptation technologies: Even when climate predictions are available, communities may not have access to the necessary technologies and resources to implement effective adaptation measures. This can be particularly challenging in regions with limited infrastructure and economic resources. Dependency on external aid: Many developing countries rely heavily on international aid to support climate adaptation efforts. However, this can create a dependency on...

  Urban climate research is an interdisciplinary field that studies the interactions between cities and the environment, with a focus on how cities affect, and are affected by, climate and weather patterns. Cities have unique characteristics that can create a microclimate with distinctive features such as higher temperatures, reduced air quality, and more extreme weather events compared to their surrounding rural areas. This difference is often referred to as the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Urban climate research aims to provide insights into the mechanisms that lead to UHIs and its potential impacts on human life, the environment and the economy. Urban climate research methods typically involve field experiments, observational studies, and computer models. Researchers use a variety of instruments such as high-resolution weather stations, UAVs, lidars, temperature sensors, air quality monitors, and satellite data to measure the variables that affect urban climate, including wea...

  Geoengineering refers to the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the Earth's climate system to counteract the effects of global warming. One technique used in geoengineering is cloud seeding, a type of weather modification that aims to change the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds by dispersing substances into them. Cloud seeding works by introducing condensation nuclei , or tiny particles, into clouds. The particles attract water droplets which then grow larger and heavier, eventually falling as precipitation. The specific type of particles used in cloud seeding can vary depending on the desired outcome. For example, silver iodide is commonly used to increase snowfall, while sodium chloride is used to stimulate the growth of rain droplets. The process of cloud seeding involves deploying the particles into the clouds using various methods such as airplanes or ground-based generators. The particles then mix with the existing moisture in the clouds and p...

I was sitting in an urban comfort university complex in Montreal, Canada, while drinking coffee from a recycled cup  wrapped by recycled sleeve (Figure 1). I thought, if most of the materials that we use are recycled, there will be more reductions in carbon emissions. This would reduce the impacts of the extremes of climate change such as heatwaves, floods and other air and water related storms. So, I appreciated the business model, which gives attention to recycling.  More than 50% emissions reductions are expected by mid- 21st century. Therefore, there should be continuous recycling as can be seen from Figure 1 where the sleeve is made from 100% recycled material and then near the bottom it redirects the consumer to put it in a recycling trash box so that it will be reused. This continuous reusing reduces the new materials  (e.g., forest products, chemicals, etc) required to make the sleeves and the coffee cups and the environmental benefit cannot be underestimated....

Let us explore alternative ideas about the causes of the extremes of weather and climate. Are we creating our own weather reality? According to Quantum Mechanics, "the action of measurement changes the state of a physical system". This is derived from the superposition principle and "the Schrodinger's cat paradox", i.e., a cat put in a box with a radioactive element is both dead and alive until someone opens the box. This is to mean that the state of the cat is the superposition of the two states "death" and "life". Whether the superposition is linear or non-linear doesn't matter here. The presence of a radioactive material may favor more of death state than alive, so that the superposition sways towards the other end. Then the question is, what is the action of opening? The action of opening collapses the state into one, either death or life and not the superposition of the two. Does the action of opeing the box result in the happenned ...

Debate erupted about spectrally nudging regional climate models during summer 2016 training on regional climate modeling at National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The debate was whether nudging is valid for regional climate models. Because of the interest of many participants who were PhDs and postdocs from all over the world, special session was assigned for extended discussion. I was new to the nudging concepts at the time, but thought that it is interesting, especially whether nudging is useful for downscaling reanalysis and GCMs incorporating urban canopy models. I dropped my ear and followed the discussion. Based on the ideas raised from the organizers and participants, I also forwarded some questions of relevance for the urban climate modeling. As an extended discussion during the afternoon, many questions were raised: If a regional climate model is spectrally nudged, doesn't it lose its added value as a regional climate model because nudging forces the model t...

Under a warming climate intense heatwaves are expected that would stay for hours, days, weeks and months.  It becomes even worse under urbanization - the more cities grow , the  more natural land covers such as vegetation and soil are replaced by impervious surfaces such as concrete, asphalt roads and buildings. These impervious  urban surfaces can't retain water much longer like soil and vegetation and this would exacerbate the heating further.  Urban heat islands add more than 3 deg. C (Fig. 1) to the heatwaves. The combined effects of heatwaves and urban heat islands are heat-related illnesses and death - specifically affecting young toddlers and old people because their body regulation mechanism is lower. Figure 1. Urban heat island adds more than 3 deg. C to the heatwaves and increases the frequency or duration of the heat. Under a warming climate, it is only a matter of time before we start to seek for cooling mechanisms both for short term and long t...

My recent review paper "Review of urban surface parameterizations for numerical climate models"( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212095517300858 ) presents the historical development of urban climate models, uncertainties and challenges  in obtaining representative urban weather and climate information. There are wide scale urban weather/climate models and the level of detail and complexity required for a particular study is oftentimes a challenge for the climate modeling communities. Weather/climate models are required for different purposes, such as understanding the teleconnections between different scale weather/climate phenomena, for weather forecasting and climate projections, and for policy purposes. Therefore, improving the performance of climate models is one of the top priorities in the climate modeling communities. On the other hand, obtaining accurate initial and boundary information is challenging. Observations data of high spatial density ...

A research conducted in 2014 during my internship at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Presented at Atmospheric and Oceanic Science unit, IGSSA and Physics Department, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia Soil organic matter plays an important role in modulating weather/climate. Increase in greenhouse gas concentrations results in considerable rise in land temperatures as indicated by climate projections. The warming of soil facilitates the decomposition of soil organic matter which further adds carbon dioxide in to the atmosphere. The impact of warming of soil if drifts towards wet soil will increase methane gas release in to the atmosphere. Methane is radiatively more active than carbon dioxide, hence results in more warming. The impact of warming of soil does not stop there. It will increase microbial activity which releases nitrogen from the soil and prompt shrub growth resulting in positive albedo feedback. This study, therefore, is star...

Kids love to taste, even a snow. I really like eating snow too, but wait a moment. This winter, I thought a little and questioned my old behaviour. What if polluted air particulates mix with snow? the particles that cause cancer, for example. As far as I am aware of, there are carcinogenic particulates in the air and their life-time is long. So, is it really good to taste snow? and if not, when is it safe to eat snow? As snow falls from the sky, it traps and binds with air particles. The most common particles found out bound with snow are soot and other chemicals that are released by oil industries, coal and wood burning plants. Pesticides that have been in the air for a long period of time may also appear in the current snow. Researchers found out that, even 30, 40, 50 years old air particles, in several cities, are found in snow, even if the amounts are very low. When is it safe to eat snow? It is better to wait for two or three snow falls. The first fall is not a guarantee that...

It is awhile since it was found out that the air we breath can disrupt the  bodies ability to function properly. The studies confirmed that traffic fumes and cigarette smokes are the main problems. Other tiny and irritating particulate matters in the air trigger widespread inflammation and disruption  to the body's ability to burn energy efficiently leading to undesired weight gain.  Without any other changes in lifestyles or diet, polluted air may cause piled up weights. Even if the short term effects are minimal, in the long run, these would be high enough to affect the human metabolism. Besides the respiratory illnesses, it can suppresses our immune system and leaves us more vulnerable to diseases,  and it disrupts the energy burning mechanism and exposes us to obesity, diabetes and even triggers blood pressure.  In this regard, there has been studies conducted on mice, that would offer clues to the effects of air pollution  that may reach fa...

What would happen if nuclear war erupts? a silly question that anyone can answer right away, "nuclear war claims the lives of many people". However, the consequences are more than claiming lives. It worsens the already messy weather and climate, releases pollutants into the air which leaves generations struggle to remove from the air, and it can pollute water and the atmosphere. It could also alter the general circulation of the atmosphere and oceans, and worsens weather and climate. The already wet regions remain wet and the already dry regions remain dry, i.e., there will be an increase in frequency and magnitude of the climate extremes, such as floods, heat waves and other water and wind storms. What is really a nuclear war? A nuclear war is when the fighting parties are equipped with nuclear warheads and are capable of dropping the bomb at the intended battlefield and/or economically active region that would cripple the economy and power of the opposing side. So, gen...

People migrate to cities due to different reasons such as easy access to schools, health facilities, jobs and transportation . More people, therefore, live in urban areas than in rural. According to the  United Nations estimate, in 2014 more than 54% of the world population dwell in cities. It was 30% in 1950. Projections indicate that 66%  of the world's population will live in urban by 2050 . Most of urban people reside in relatively small areas with high number of inhabitants per square meter of land (UN, 2015): " Close to half of the world's urban dwellers reside in relatively small settlements of less than 500, 000 inhabitants, while only around one in eight live in the 28 mega-cities with more than 10 million inhabitants. " It is ages since people noticed that urban air was different from rural air. However, it was air pollution which is the hallmark of the urban atmosphere. In 1818 Luke Howard (1772-1864) published the first edition of a book deal...