Jin, M., and J. M. Shepherd, 2005: Inclusion of urban landscape in a climate model - How can satellite data help?. Bull. Am. Met. Soc., 86, 681-896.
Urban regions, which cover only approximately 0.2% of the earthÕs land surface, contain about half of the human population (UNPD 2001). Modeling urban weather and climate is critical for human welfare, but has been hampered for at least two reasons: i) no urban landscape has been included in global and regional climate models (GCMs and RCMs, respectively), and ii) detailed information on urban characteristics is hard to obtain. With the adÂvance of satellite observations, adding urban schemes into climate models in order to scale projections of global/regional climate to urban areas becomes esÂsential. Inclusion of urbanized landscape into climate models was discussed in depth at the fall American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting of 2003 in the session entitled ÒHuman-induced climate variations linked to urbanization: From observations to modelÂing,Ó which took place on 12 December 2003 in San Francisco, California. The following notes summaÂrize what is known and what needs to be advanced on this topic.
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