Seasonally and diurnally different response of surface air temperature to historical urbanization in Sapporo, North Japan

Abstract:

Anthropogenic landscape changes have dramatically altered near surface climate in many regions of the world. In particular, regional/local-scale land use change is attributed to the long-term change in observed surface air temperature through changes in surface radiation budget and energy partitioning. This study analyses the response of surface air temperature characteristics to the historical urbanization in Sapporo, a snowy city in North Japan.

Around Sapporo, natural forest has been cleared and replaced with urban since the late 19th century. Annual mean temperature in Sapporo has increased dramatically, whose rate being approximately twice of that in the station without urbanization. The rate of temperature increase shows asymmetric feature among seasons and dependent on time of the day; a prominent warming in winter daily minimum temperature and no significant trend in summer daily maximum temperature. In order to clarify the seasonal and diurnal dependence of the response to land use change, two 27-year simulations were conducted using WRF-ARW model nudged to reanalysis data during 19872/1983 winter to 2008/2009 winter; a control run uses past land cover and a sensitivity run uses present land cover.

The numerical experiments successfully replicate the observed influence of urbanization with higher temperature change in winter nights and smaller temperature change in summer days. An analysis on surface energy balance indicates the changes in Bowen ratio is a primal cause of increasing sensible heat in both summer and winter. However, atmospheric response to the elevated sensible heat flux is very different depending on boundary layer structure between winter and summer or between night and day. This mechanism could clearly explain the asymmetric temperature trend observed worldwide, especially in cold regions where nocturnal inversion develops.