Urban Climate 10 (2014) 201–203

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Urban Climate
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/uclim

Introduction to special issue

ICUC8, the 8th International Conference on Urban Climates held in conjunction with the 10th
Symposium on the Urban Environment, was held in Dublin, Ireland from August 6th–10th 2012.
ICUC8 was jointly organised by the International Association for Urban Climate (IAUC) and the
American Meteorological Society’s Board of the Urban Environment. ICUC events are held on a three
year cycle; ICUC7 was held in Yokohama, Japan in 2009 and ICUC9 will be held in Toulouse, France in
2015. ICUC8 was the largest conference devoted to urban climates to this point and there were nearly
500 papers and posters presented; the majority of these are in the conference proceedings, which are
available online at the IAUC website (www.urban-climate.org). Separately, a report on the conference
can be found in Urban News, the newsletter of the IAUC.1
The thirteen papers in this issue are a selection of those presented at ICUC8 and were chosen by the
ICUC8 organising committee with the intention of giving a glance of the multi-facet nature of current
urban climate research as well as its interdisciplinary flavour. The tradition of ICUC events has been to
use plenary talks to elucidate on past progress, current status and research prospective in urban
climate research. Three of the papers in this issue are based on plenary talks given at ICUC8. These
include: a historical perspective on climate-based urban planning (Hebbert); an overview on the
techniques to estimate of urban-based greenhouse emissions (Christen) and; an evaluation of progress
on our understanding of the urban boundary layer (Barlow). The topic of another plenary session on
meso-scale urban modelling challenges (Ching) has already been published by this journal.2 Together,
these papers help to identify current gaps in knowledge on urban climate effects and the potential of this
knowledge in the application to urban design and planning.
The other papers in this issue were not selected to provide a coherent review of the state of the field
but they do capture the breadth and diversity of the field both in terms of topics covered and methods
employed. These include:

1. A concern for the quality of observations in the complex urban setting;

2. The need to meld observational and modelling approaches for a more complete understanding;
3. The importance of scale when examining urban processes and climate effects;
4. A concern for standardisation of approaches to ensure clarity in scientific dissemination and
research and
5. Increased sophistication in modelling urban processes across time and space scales.

1
http://urban-climate.org/newsletters/IAUC045.pdf
2
Ching, J., 2013, A perspective on urban canopy layer modeling for weather, climate and air quality applications. Urban Climate
3, 13–39.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2014.06.001
2212-0955/Ó 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
202 Introduction to special issue/Urban Climate 10 (2014) 201–203

A great number of urban surface climate models have been developed over the last two decades but
it is only recently that these have been evaluated as part of an international project. In this issue, Best
& Grimmond examine the sensitivity of a selection of these models to initial conditions. One of the
great advantages of models is their ability to conduct conceptual experiments. Martilli examines
the hierarchy of climate changes that are driven by cities and explores the potential for unintended
consequences as a result of policies that are informed by concerns for global climate changes only.
Masson et al. take a comprehensive approach to the effects of climate change on cities in the future
by evaluating the joint effects of both projected changes in climate and in the form and functions
of cities. All urban models require data on the texture of the urban surface but the desired information
is fundamentally linked to the scale of application. Mouzourides et al. introduce a novel approach to
the numerical description of urban morphology by structuring urban databases to store (and retrieve)
information appropriate for the scale of analysis; the result may provide a simple signature that is
unique to a city and could be associated with its urban effect.
Interpreting climate observations made in an urban context is often fraught with difficulty owing to
the placement of stations and the inherent heterogeneity of the urban landscape. Fenner et al. examine
relatively long-term urban climate measurements made within Berlin’s urban canopy layer by placing
these within the context of Local Climate Zones, which are used as means of categorising neighbour-
hood-scale landscapes for interpreting the records. Kotthaus and Grimmond on the basis of eddy covari-
ance flux measurements over London explore the relationships between the recorded observation and
driving processes. What is revealed in a forensic examination is the number and variety of contributions
to the measured signal and the need for diligence in quality control when interpreting urban observations.
The interdisciplinary character of urban climate research is also explored in several papers that
focus on the human dimension of climate changes. While studies on indoor comfort have a long tra-
dition, the application of methods to outdoor conditions is still problematic. Johansson et al. propose
guidelines for the instruments and methods used to examine outdoor comfort so as to provide a com-
mon basis for comparison and discussion. As if to emphasise this point Thorsson et al. show that the
Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT) is correlated linked to heat-related morbidity and could be a useful
measure of heat-wave conditions that represent a threat to public health. Finally, Erell et al. explore
whether modification of the albedo of urban forms to address global climate change concerns could
have detrimental thermal impacts on pedestrians. Again, the need for a comprehensive assessment
of climate at all scales and their interactions is highlighted; it is naive to assume that policies designed
to address climate concerns at one scale will axiomatically be beneficial and effective at another.
To conclude, this special issue is just a snapshot of current development of urban climatology; the
papers do demonstrate its rapid maturation in its understanding of urban climate effects and identify
many of its gaps and challenges. We hope that it stimulates further progress in urban climatology.

References

Barlow, Janet Fraser, 2014. Progress in observing and modelling the urban boundary layer. Urban Clim. 10 (P2), 216–240.
Best, Martin, Grimmond, Sue, 2014. Importance of initial state and atmospheric conditions for urban land surface models’
performance. Urban Clim. 10 (P2), 387–406.
Christen, Andreas, 2014. Atmospheric measurement techniques to quantify greenhouse gas emissions from cities. Urban Clim.
10 (P2), 241–260.
Erell, Evyatar, Boneh, Daniel, Bar (Kutiel), Pua, Pearlmutter, David, 2014. Effect of high-Albedo materials on pedestrian thermal
stress in urban street canyons. Urban Clim. 10 (P2), 367–386.
Fenner, Daniel, Meier, Fred, Scherer, Dieter, Polze, Albert, 2014. Spatial and temporal air temperature variability in Berlin,
Germany, during the years 2001–2010. Urban Clim. 10 (P2), 308–331.
Hebbert, Michael, 2014. Climatology for city planning in historical perspective. Urban Clim. 10 (P2), 204–215.
Johansson, Erik, Thorsson, Sofia, Emmanuel, Rohinton, Krüger, Eduardo, 2014. Instruments and methods in outdoor thermal
comfort studies – the need for standardization. Urban Clim. 10 (P2), 346–366.
Kotthaus, Simone, Grimmond, Sue, 2014a. Energy exchange in a dense urban environment – Part I: temporal variability of long-
term observations in central London. Urban Clim. 10 (P2), 261–280.
Kotthaus, Simone, Grimmond, Sue, 2014b. Energy exchange in a dense urban environment – Part II: impact of spatial
heterogeneity of the surface. Urban Clim. 10 (P2), 281–307.
Martilli, Alberto, 2014. An idealized study of city structure, urban climate, energy consumption, and air quality. Urban Clim. 10
(P2), 430–446.
Masson, Valery, Marchadier, Colette, Adolphe, Luc, Aguejdad, Rahim, Avner, Paolo, Bonhomme, Marion, Bretagne, Geneviève,
Briottet, Xavier, Bueno, Bruno, de Munck, Cécile, Doukari, Omar, Hallegatte, Stéphane, Hidalgo, Julia, Houet, Thomas, Le-
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 Introduction to special issue / Urban Climate 10 (2014) 201–203 203

Salagnac, Zibouche, Kamel, . Adapting cities to climate change: a systemic modelling approach. Urban Clim. 10 (P2), 407–
429.
Mouzourides, Petros, Kyprianou, Andreas, Brown, Michael J., Carissimo, Bertrand, Choudhary, Ruchi, Neophytou, Marina K.-A.,
2014. Searching for the distinctive signature of a city in atmospheric modelling: could Multi-Resolution-Analysis (MRA)
provide the DNA of a city? Urban Clim. 10 (P2), 447–475.
Thorsson, Sofia, Rocklöv, Joacim, Konarska, Janina, Lindberg, Fredrik, Holmer, Björn, Dousset, Bénédicte, Rayner, David, 2014.
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Guest editors
⇑
Gerald Mills
University College Dublin, Ireland
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: gerald.mills@ucd.ie
Silvana Di Sabatino
Università del Salento, Italy
Evyatar Erell
Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Alberto Martilli
CIEMAT Unidad de Contaminacion Atmosferice, Spain