Theor. Appl. Climatol.

79, 175–184 (2004)

DOI 10.1007/s00704-004-0069-0

1
Graduate School of Science & Engineering, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan
2
Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
3
Center for Global Environmental Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Japan

Urban climate simulation by incorporating satellite-derived

vegetation cover distribution into a mesoscale
meteorological model
Y. Hirano1 , Y. Yasuoka2 , and T. Ichinose3

With 8 Figures

Received September 1, 2003; revised March 12, 2004; accepted May 7, 2004
Published online October 14, 2004 # Springer-Verlag 2004

Summary (Ojima, 1990=91). The occurrence of the urban

We simulated urban climate with surface boundary
conditions based on satellite remote sensing (RS) data.
Most previous mesoscale meteorological modeling studies
use land-use data instead as the surface boundary condi-
tions. However, small patches of vegetation-cover, such as
roadside trees and garden trees, are excluded from the land-
use data. Therefore, we made a fractional vegetation cover
(FVC) dataset with these small patches of vegetation-cover
from RS data, and then simulated the urban heat island in
Tokyo with FVC data as new surface boundary conditions.
In addition, we compared the above simulation results with
results from a simulation that used only land-use data. The
comparison shows that the air temperature with the new
boundary condition is up to 1.5
C lower than that with the
old boundary condition. Furthermore, the new boundary
condition led to predicted air temperatures closer to the
measured temperatures than those with the old boundary
condition. Therefore, it is important for urban climate
simulations to include small vegetation cover.
1. Introduction
In Japan, the urban heat island in the summer is
an important issue related to energy demands, the
livability in residential areas, and the peak elec-
tric power load due to the use of air-conditioning
heat island in the Tokyo metropolitan area
(TMA) has been reported for many years (e.g.
Kawamura, 1977; Fujibe and Asai, 1980;
Yamashita, 1996). Recently, the Ministry of Envi-
ronment and various local governments began
measures to mitigate of the urban heat island.
Thus, it is important to assess the urban thermal
environment precisely.
A lot of numerical studies have simulated the
urban climate in TMA (Kimura and Takahashi,
1991; Saitoh et al., 1996; Mochida et al., 1997;
Ichinose et al., 1999; Urano et al., 1999; Kusaka
et al., 2000; Dhakal and Hanaki, 2002). These
previous studies used mesoscale meteorological
models with urban effects to simulate the urban
climate because the urban climate is influenced
by local circulations, such as the land- and sea-
breeze circulations and the mountain- and valley-
wind circulations. To represent the urban effects
in a mesoscale model, physical characteristics
(e.g. albedo, specific heat, etc.) are assumed for
each land-cover type, and are inputted into the
model according to land-use data. However,
land-use data is not necessarily in agreement
176 Y. Hirano et al.
with actual land-cover conditions. That is, the
land-use data describes the use of the land, not
the ground surface materials. These discrepan-
cies can introduce errors into the urban climate
simulations. This can be a particularly large prob-
lem in TMA because the land-use in urban dis-
tricts has a great deal of vegetation as roadside
and garden trees. The land-use types of such
vegetation are assigned to the traffic use and
the building lot respectively, and are not distin-
guished by land-use data. Indeed, we estimate
that the fractional vegetation cover (FVC), which
is the ratio of vegetation to horizontally project-
ed area, in TMA is about 15% (see Section 2.2),
whereas, according to the statistics compiled by
the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (1998), for-
ests, grasslands, farmlands and parks (includ-
ing amusement parks, sports grounds, swimming
pools, etc.) cover only 0.1%, 0.8%, 1.7% and
6.0% of the land, respectively. This suggests that
most of the vegetation in TMA is not included
in land-use data. However, such small patches
of vegetation should not be ignored because
they strongly influence the urban climate (e.g.
Shasua-bar and Hoffman, 2000).
Sailor (1995), Avissar (1996), Taha (1996), and
Sailor (1998) used mesoscale models to simulate
how urban vegetation effects the atmospheric
environment. In these studies, the influences from
vegetation were represented through a bulk-layer
parameterization (Avissar and Pielke, 1989) and
the vegetation density was parameterized by FVC.
Avissar (1996) evaluated the vegetation effects
on the urban thermal environment by setting
FVC to 0, 33, 67, and 100%. Sailor (1995) and
Taha (1996) evaluated the effects of urban green-
ing based on greening scenarios in the Los Angeles
basin. Sailor (1998) also evaluated the potential
impacts of vegetation by increasing the FVC of
residential areas in hypothetical cities. However,
in these studies, FVCs were given as parameters
and were not necessarily in agreement with actual
vegetation density.
Satellite remote sensing (RS) has been devel-
oped recently to measure actual surface condi-
tions. Ueno and Imura (1995) used land-cover
classification results from RS data instead of
land-use data to simulate the urban climate. Their
approach should allow one to more realistically
parameterize the ground surface. However, the
aim of these usual methods of categorical land-
cover classification is not to express the area
ratios of each land-cover type but to distinguish
a dominant land-cover type in each pixel; thus, a
pixel that contains more than one land-cover
component is problematic in such methods.
Therefore, it is difficult to distinguish the small
patches of vegetation-cover such as roadside
trees in an urban area with moderate spatial reso-
lution RS data that covers the whole TMA within
a single scene (e.g. Landsat TM, JERS-1=OPS,
ASTER). Although methods have been proposed
to estimate the area ratios of each land-cover
type by RS (e.g. Settle and Drake, 1993), they
are not yet considered as sufficiently concise and
not ready for practical use.
For vegetation, however, estimating the area
ratio (i.e. the FVC) is relatively easy because
vegetation has distinct spectral characteristics at
visible and near-infrared bands. A lot of estima-
tion methods for FVC have been proposed that
are sufficiently practical (e.g. Dymond et al.,
1992; Purevdorj et al., 1998), although other
land-cover types in each grid are not distin-
guished. Using these techniques, one can esti-
mate the FVC including the small patches of
vegetation in urban areas that would be missed
in land-use data.
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to elab-
orate the surface boundary conditions of urban
climate simulation by use of the RS data in a
mesoscale model. We use both RS data and
land-use data. The area ratios of vegetation are
given by FVC derived from RS data, whereas the
land-cover types of the non-vegetation parts in
each grid are assumed to be those described by
land-use data. Through this process, we simulate
the urban climate in TMA with a realistic vegeta-
tion distribution.
2. Parameterization of the ground
surface
2.1 Model description
The mesoscale model used in this study is the
Colorado State University Mesoscale Model
(CSUMM) developed by Pielke (1974) and
improved by Ulrickson and Mass (1990) and
Kessler and Douglas (1992). This model assumes
incompressible fluid, hydrostatic equilibrium, the
Boussinesq approximation, and uses a terrain-
 Urban climate simulation 177

Fig. 1. Study area. (a) Computational domain with a variable interval grid. (b) The target area with an approximately 2-km
grid. Solid circles in (b) mark the observation points of the High-density Urban Climate Observation Network

following coordinate system. Further details are 2.2 Estimation of FVC using RS data
described in the article of Kessler and Douglas
The RS data used in this study is the visible and
(1992). We use the modified version of CSUMM
the near-infrared bands data acquired by JERS-1
prepared at the National Institute for Environ-
(Japanese Earth Resource Satellite-1) on 5 July
mental Studies, a version of which has been
1997. This RS data had already been prepro-
already used for urban climate simulations (e.g.
cessed for a radiometric correction and a system
Ichinose et al., 1999; Izumi et al., 1999; Urano
correction as a standard product (Level 2) by the
et al., 1999; Dhakal and Hanaki, 2002). For the
National Space Development Agency of Japan
precise representation of urban effects, the meth-
(NASDA). We converted digital numbers (DNs)
ods to input surface parameters and anthropo-
of the RS data to the surface reflectance and
genic heat have been improved (Ichinose et al.,
made the geometric correction for the horizontal
1999). This model employs a simple slab model
spatial georeferencing. We used the formulae in
for ground surface scheme, which assumes the
Shimada and Nakai (1993) to convert the data
ground surface to be a flat plate and represents
into the input radiance, and we used the MOD-
the land-use coverage with several parameters
TRAN radiative transfer code (Berk et al., 1998)
(see Section 2.3), and thus does not contain urban
for atmospheric correction. The geometric cor-
and vegetation canopy layers.
rection was done using nearest-neighbor resam-
The target area, which includes TMA, is divided
pling with 12 ground control points (GCPs) and
into 15 grids for the east–west direction, and 18
the RS data were resampled to a spatial resolu-
grids for the north–south direction with a mesh
tion of 40 m. The Normalized Difference Vegeta-
size of about 2 km  2 km (Fig. 1). To simulate
tion Index (NDVI), which is a well-known and
the local circulations developed around the target
commonly used vegetation index, was used to
area, the computational domain is set at 500 km 
estimate FVC. The NDVI is calculated using
500 km with a variable interval grid system; the
grid interval becomes larger in regions far from NIR  Vis
NDVI ¼ ; ð1Þ
the target area. For the vertical direction, the NIR þ Vis
model covers the atmosphere between the ground where Vis and NIR are the visible red band (band
and 4 km in 17 layers, and covers the ground 2) and the near-infrared band (band 3) data,
down to 0.5-m depth in 11 layers, both regions respectively. To investigate the relationship be-
having the variable interval grid system. The cal- tween NDVI and the FVC, a test area of
culation time step is 20 seconds. 2  1.4 km2 was selected near TMA, in the city
178
of Inagi. The FVC data in the test area were
generated through a visual interpretation of an
aerial photograph of the test area. This aerial pho-
tograph was taken by the Geographical Survey
Institute of Japan on 6 July 1997 (the day after
the RS data acquisition). Figure 2 shows the
scatter plot of NDVI calculated from Eq. (1)
versus the FVCs obtained from the aerial photo-
graph. The linear relationship between the FVC
Fig. 2. Scatter diagram of FVC versus NDVI in the test
area. FVC classes are divided by horizontal dotted lines.
The solid circles are the averaged values of NDVI in each
FVC class. The solid line is the linear fit to the solid circles
(Eq. (2))
Fig. 3. Estimated FVC in the study region. The dashed-
square indicates the target area of this study (see Fig. 1)
Y. Hirano et al.
and NDVI appears in Fig. 2; the correlation coef-
ficient is R ¼ 0.904. The FVCs were divided into
11 classes (0–5, 5–15, 15–25, 25–35, . . . 85–95,
95–100) and then averaged the FVC values and the
NDVI values in each class. Using the averaged
values, we obtained the linear regression
FVCð%Þ ¼ 38:03 þ 162:80 NDVI: ð2Þ
We used Eq. (2) on the RS data in the whole
region to make the FVC in Fig. 3. Typical FVC
values in the target area and in the whole region
of RS data (target area plus surroundings) were
about 15% and 30%, respectively. The average
error in the test area was found to be 8.64%;
the error seems to be somewhat large. Errors
may be caused by NDVI variations due to vege-
tation types and land-cover types. Other possible
error sources are misinterpretation and misregis-
tration of the aerial photograph. Although the
error seems large, use of the FVC data allowed
us to include small patches of vegetation that
would be ignored in the conventional method,
and thus the method provides a significant im-
provement over the previous methods.
Fig. 4. Parameterization of the ground surface in the con-
ventional method and in the present method that includes
FVC data
 Urban climate simulation 179

Table 1. Surface parameter values for each land-use type (DNLI)

Land-use types Roughness Evaporation Albedo Density Specific Heat diffusion Land-cover
of DNLI length (cm) efficiency (g cm3 ) heat coefficient elements
(J g1 K1 ) (cm2 s1 )

Rice paddy 10 0.50 0.17 1.8 1.17 0.0053 (Rice paddy)

Vegetable field 10 0.30 0.17 1.8 1.17 0.0053 (Vegetable field)
Orchard 50 0.30 0.16 1.8 1.17 0.0053
Lawn and park 50 0.30 0.16 1.8 1.17 0.0053
Forest 50 0.35 0.16 1.8 1.17 0.0053 Tree
Wasteland 15 0.20 0.14 1.8 1.17 0.0053 Soil
Built-up area 50 0.00 0.18 2.4 0.88 0.0072 Building
Traffic use 50 0.00 0.18 2.1 0.88 0.0038 Road
Other use 20 0.03 0.18 1.8 1.17 0.0035
River=Lake 0 1.00 0.08 1.0 4.19 0.0033
Seastrand 5 0.25 0.18 1.8 1.17 0.0053
Sea surface 0 1.00 0.08 1.0 4.19 0.0033 (Water)

2.3 Determinations of the surface Detailed Digital Information (DDI) because it

parameters has a spatial resolution of 10 m. We converted
the DDI into the mesh size of 40 m. Then, DDI
Figure 4 shows the parameterization method of
were divided into vegetation and non-vegetation
this study. The meteorological model used in this
land-cover elements as shown in Table 2, and
study assumes the ground surface to be a flat,
the area ratio of each element was given to each
horizontal plate. To represent the land-use cover-
grid of DDI by the FVC data. Surface parameters
age in this model, surface parameters, which
used in the model were determined by calculat-
represent physical characteristics such as the
ing the area-weighted averages of the parameter
albedo and specific heat of the land-cover types,
values (shown in Table 1) in each grid of the
are set for each grid point on the flat ground sur-
mesoscale model.
face. Because it is difficult to obtain the actual
For the agricultural land and the water area,
parameter distributions, the distributions are usu-
the FVC data was not used. Instead, the surface
ally derived by applying surface parameters of
parameters provided for the each land-use type
each land-use type to each grid of land-use data.
shown in Table 1 were applied in the same way
However, as mentioned previously, small vegeta-
as in previous studies. This was done because it
tion covers such as roadside trees and garden
was difficult to obtain the appropriate parameters
trees, which are excluded from land-use data,
and these areas are extremely small in TMA. In
cannot be represented through this method.
the outside area of the FVC data (Fig. 3), DNLI
Therefore, we used the FVC data in combination
with land-use data to set the surface parameters Table 2. Combinations of land-cover elements
through the following procedure.
Table 1 shows the dataset of the surface param- Land-use types Combination of land-cover
eters used in the previous studies (Ichinose et al., of DDI elements
(Vegetation þ non-Vegetation)
1999; Izumi et al., 1999; Urano et al., 1999;
Dhakal and Hanaki, 2002). We used these values Forest=Grassland Tree þ Soil
as parameters for the land-cover elements de- Developed land Tree þ Soil
fined in Table 1. Most previous studies used the Park=Green zone Tree þ Soil
Rice paddy (Rice paddy)
land-use data from the Digital National Land Vegetable field (Vegetable field)
Information (DNLI), which covers all of Japan Built-up area Tree þ Building
at the mesh size of about 100 m. However, the Other public area Tree þ Building
spatial resolution of DNLI is not sufficient to Any other areas Tree þ Building
incorporate it with the FVC data; the spatial Traffic use Tree þ Road
River=Lake (Water)
resolution of DNLI is 100 m compared to the
Sea (Water)
40-m resolution in the FVC. Therefore, we used
180
was used to set the surface parameters in Table 1
in the same way as previous studies.
3. Simulation results
3.1 Simulation under actual conditions
We simulated the urban climate under actual
conditions with actual FVC estimated from RS
data (Case RS). To simulate typical summer
days, we selected 3–7 July 1998, a period with
clear-sky conditions in which Japan was covered
with a Pacific anticyclone. Initial conditions were
from observational data for this period, as ac-
quired by the Japanese Meteorological Agency
and the Japan Oceanographic Data Center. By
doing an ensemble average for the data of the
above five days, we made composite data to
represent one day in the simulations. In this
study, the initial values were horizontally uni-
form and the anthropogenic heating was assumed
to be the diurnal variation of the energy con-
sumption with diurnal average of 30 W m2 for
built-up areas and traffic use areas (Izumi et al.,
1999). The simulation was started at 0:00 local
solar time (LST), and followed for 48 hours. The
calculation results of the second day were ana-
lyzed in this study.
Figure 5 shows the horizontal distributions of
wind and temperature near the ground surface for
Case RS at 9:00, 15:00, and 21:00 LST. This
figure shows that southerly winds dominate over
the whole area. The southerly winds are acceler-
ated by the sea breezes penetrating from Tokyo
Bay and the Pacific Ocean at 15:00 (Fig. 5b). The
Fig. 5. Simulation result for Case RS at (a) 9:00, (b) 15:00 and (c) 21:00 LST at 4.5-m above ground level
Y. Hirano et al.
high temperature area (of about 34
C) appears in
the northern part of the target area; this is likely
the urban heat island. In addition, the penetration
of the sea breeze front causes large horizontal
temperature gradients around the coastal areas
of Tokyo Bay in the daytime.
3.2 Comparison to the conventional method
To determine whether our method provides more
accurate simulation results than the conventional
method, we compared the RS case with Case
noRS, a simulation based on the conventional
method. Case noRS was run using surface param-
eters that were derived from only land-use data;
the RS data were not used and the surface param-
eters were obtained by inputting the values
shown in Table 1 according to the land-use types
of DNLI. The initial conditions and the temporal
and spatial distributions of anthropogenic heat
were the same for both cases. To evaluate the sim-
ulation results, the calculated temperatures were
compared with those observed by the ground
monitoring system. The observational data used
here was obtained from 42 points of the High-
density Urban Climate Observation Network
(shown in Fig. 1b), which is supported by the
Japan Science and Technology Corporation. The
measured data represent the temperature of
the atmospheric boundary layer rather than the
urban canopy layer, because these data were
acquired in instrument screens in playgrounds
of elementary schools, which were open spaces
of sufficient extent. Thus, the measured tem-
peratures will be compared to those calculated
 Urban climate simulation 181

Fig. 6. Scatter diagrams of calculated temperatures versus observed temperatures for Case RS (left) and Case noRS (right) at
(a) 6:00, (b) 9:00, (c) 12:00, (d) 15:00, (e) 18:00 and (f) 21:00 LST. Dark lines represent Y ¼ X

through our mesoscale model. The ensemble
averages of data from 3–7 July 1998 were used
for the comparison.
Figure 6 has scatter diagrams of the calculated
versus observed temperatures, the root mean
square errors (RMSE), and the correlation coeffi-
cients (R) for both cases. These figures reveal
that the RMSE is smaller and the R is higher
for Case RS than for Case noRS at all times. This
shows that the simulation results became more
accurate by use of the RS data. In particular,
the RMSE and R differences between Case RS
and Case noRS are large during the daytime;
the maximum difference in RMSE is 0.806
C
at 12:00 LST, and that in R is 0.077 at 15:00
LST. We suggest that the temperature rise due
to a heating of the ground surface during the day-
time is less than that predicted in Case noRS
because the small vegetation, which is not in-
cluded in the land-use data, decreases the air
temperature. On the other hand, the above differ-
ence was not apparent from midnight to dawn
(not shown in Fig. 6).
Figure 7 shows the horizontal distribution of
the temperature difference between Case RS and
Case noRS near the ground at 15:00 LST. This
figure shows that the air temperature for Case
RS is 1.5
C lower than that for Case noRS in the
western region of the target area. This results from
the fact that the land-use of this region mainly
182 Y. Hirano et al.
Fig. 7. Temperature difference in
C between Case RS and
Case noRS at 15:00 LST at 4.5-m above ground level.
Negative values show cooler temperatures under Case RS.
The dashed-square shows the calculation area of Fig. 8
consists of low-rise residential areas that would
include a lot of garden-trees, even though DNLI
assigns this area as building lot. In addition,
because this region is inland of the target area,
the sea breeze front arrives relatively late in the
day. It appears that the penetration of moist and
cool air from Tokyo Bay weakens the effect of
vegetation in the coastal area. On the other hand,
in the eastern region, the air temperature for Case
RS is only 0.5
C lower than that for Case noRS.
The reason for this difference is mainly that the
eastern region has high-density urban districts,
dense residential areas, and reclaimed lands
of Tokyo Bay, which makes the FVC relatively
low in comparison with the surrounding areas.
Figure 8 shows the diurnal variations of sensi-
ble and latent heat fluxes from the ground surface
Fig. 8. Average diurnal variations of sensible and latent
heat fluxes for Case RS and Case noRS in the dashed-square
area of Fig. 7
in the western region of the target area. This fig-
ure shows a large increase of latent heat flux
(230 W m2 at 13:00 LST) and a smaller yet sig-
nificant decrease of sensible heat flux (180 W m2 )
that arose due to our use of FVC.
The Bowen ratio, which is the ratio of sensible
to latent heat, in the daytime is 5.0 for the Case
noRS and 0.84 for the Case RS. Given the known
fluctuations in the Bowen ratio due to variations
in weather conditions and climatic conditions,
the RS value of 0.84 is consistent with the mea-
surements of 1–1.5 in built-up areas in TMA
in the summer (Kanda et al., 1997b; Moriwaki
and Kanda, 2003) and a measurement of 0.4 in a
large green space in TMA (Kanda et al., 1997a).
In contrast, the value of 5.0 for Case noRS is
obviously too large. It should be clear that the
simulation for Case noRS provides an unrealistic
result because, as mentioned above, most of the
vegetation in TMA is excluded from the land-use
data.
4. Conclusions
The fractional vegetation cover (FVC) estimated
from satellite remote sensing (RS) data has been
incorporated into a mesoscale meteorological
model to improve the surface boundary condi-
tions. Then, the urban heat island in the Tokyo
metropolitan area (TMA) on a typical summer
day was simulated with the realistic vegetation
distribution (Case RS). In addition, we com-
pared the above simulation with that done by
using the previous simulation method, which is
the use of only land-use data for the ground sur-
face (Case noRS). The result shows that the dif-
ference in air temperature between Case RS and
Case noRS is up to 1.5
C in the daytime in low-
rise residential area. By comparing these simu-
lation results with observed data, we confirmed
that the simulation accuracy has been improved
by applying FVC data. This result suggests that
it is important for simulations to include the
small vegetation cover in urban areas. The meth-
od proposed here should make it possible to
assess the urban thermal environment more pre-
cisely and to present more realistic data to plan-
ners and architects.
Although the results from this method can
depend on the parameter values (Table 1), the
approach is nevertheless simple and practical.
 Urban climate simulation
In addition to this method, Hafner and Kidder
(1999) also proposed using RS data to improve
urban climate simulations. In their study, instead
of using land-cover types, the physical character-
istics were obtained directly from RS data by
using Carlson et al.’s (1981) method. Their ap-
proach will make it possible to parameterize the
ground surface more rigorously, although it
requires the acquisition of two surface tempera-
ture data near the times of maximum and mini-
mum temperatures. Both of these approaches
have a high possibility of practical use for im-
proving urban climate simulations.
Recent remarkable progress in RS technolo-
gies can be expected to contribute to evaluation
of urban thermal environment in various ways.
The future direction of this study is to do more
realistic evaluations of specific mitigation mea-
sures of the urban heat island by application of
these technologies.
Acknowledgments
We thank Y. Ohashi (National Institute of Advanced Indus-
trial Science and Technology) and T. Izumi (Tokyo Metro-
politan University) for helpful discussions and comments.
We also thank I. Uno (Kyushu University) for modifying
the CSUMM, and Y. Maruyama (Earth Remote Sensing Data
Analysis Center) and K. Okada (JGI, Inc.) for providing
technical support on the RS data processing. The land-use
data (DNLI and DDI) and the aerial photograph used in this
study were provided by the Geographical Survey Institute of
Japan. This study was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scien-
tific Research (KAKENHI) from the Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan.
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Authors’ addresses: Yujiro Hirano (e-mail: hirano@
1996.jukuin.keio.ac.jp), Research Fellow of the Japan
Society for the Promotion of Science, Applied Ecological
Engineering Laboratory, Department of Environmental
Science & Human Engineering, Graduate School of Science
& Engineering, Saitama University, 255 Shimo-Okubo,
Sakura-ku, Saitama City, Saitama 338-8570, Japan;
Yoshifumi Yasuoka, Institute of Industrial Science, The Uni-
versity of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro, Tokyo 153-8505,
Japan; Toshiaki Ichinose, Center for Global Environmental
Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies,
16-2, Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8506, Japan.