https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202023706009
Observation of the Urban Wind Island Effect
1 CIRES, University of Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
2 Chemical Sciences Division, ESRL, NOAA, Boulder, CO 80305, USA
* Email: sunil.baidar@noaa.gov
Published online: 7 July 2020
Urban wind island effect (UWI) is defined as a phenomenon in which boundary layer mean wind speeds in an urban area are noticeably higher than its neighboring rural areas. Unlike urban heat island effect which has been extensively studied, the UWI was only recently observed in a modeling study. Here we study existence of the UWI over Indianapolis, Indiana using wind profile measurements from two Doppler wind lidars (DWL) that were deployed in climatologically upwind and downwind of the city. Under certain atmospheric conditions higher wind speeds and turbulence were observed at the downwind site over the entire urban boundary layer outside the urban canopy layer.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2020
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
