Constarium
← Search

Data · dataset · 2026

Contrasts between urban and rural cimate in CCSM4 CMIP5 climate change scenarios

Listed in National Center for Atmospheric Research

A new parameterization of urban areas in the Community Climate System Model version 4 (CCSM4) allows for simulation of temperature in cities where most of the global population lives.

Description

CCSM4 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) simulations [Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6, 4.5, and 8.5] are analyzed to examine how urban and rural areas might respond differently to changes in climate. The urban heat island (UHI), defined as the urban minus rural air temperature, is used as a metric.

The average UHI at the end of the twenty-first century is similar to present day in RCP2.6 and RCP4.5, but decreases in RCP8.5. Both the daytime and nocturnal UHIs decrease in RCP8.5, but the decrease in the daytime UHI is larger and more uniform across regions and seasons than in the nocturnal UHI. This is caused by changes in evaporation that warm the rural surface more than the urban.

Read the rest (2 more)

There is significant spatial and seasonal variability in the response of the nocturnal UHI caused mainly by changes in the rural surface. In Europe, the response to climate change of rural leaf-stem area in summer and clouds and rural soil moisture in winter explains the majority of this variability. Climate change increases the number of warm nights in urban areas substantially more than in rural areas.

These results provide evidence that urban and rural areas respond differently to climate change. Thus, the unique aspects of the urban environment should be considered when making climate change projections, particularly since the global population is becoming increasingly urbanized.

Links

Get the data

Where it is published

Catalogue records · 1

Topics

Inferred from text
Climate change science 74% · Simulation 75%
Provenance · 1 source records, 9 field assertions
SourceKeyLast seenRaw
National Center for Atmospheric Research4ca46702-f740-4238-93ce-dd0990f9d32310 d agoJSON v1
FieldAssertionExtractorEvidence
concepts[field].anzsrc:group:3702enrichment · data ucar edutaxonomy-embedding@1.1.0title+keywords+description (74%)
concepts[field].local:field:earth-environmentalmapping · data ucar educonnector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0
concepts[field].local:field:ocean-atmosphericmapping · data ucar educonnector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0
concepts[method].local:method:simulationenrichment · data ucar edukeyword-concept-rules@1.0.0title+description (75%)
created_datesource · data ucar educonnector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0
descriptionsource · data ucar educonnector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0/notes
publication_datesource · data ucar educonnector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0
titlesource · data ucar educonnector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0/title
updated_datesource · data ucar educonnector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0