Abstract:

Urban modification of rainfall over Beijing metropolitan region has been extensively examined. A review on previous studies is presented focusing on the main approaches and conclusions and the exsiting key issuess. The approaches fall into two categories, i.e., observation-based approach and model-based approach. Their ultimate objective is to separate the signatures of urban impact on rainfall from that induced by large-scale climatic variability and ambient local environment. In the recent studies remain four key issues that should be properly addressed in future, i.e., coupling effects of urban and topograhic characteristics, spatio-temporal tendency of urban impact, uncertainty in aerosol effects, and complexity of simulation in urban canopy. Future studies should further enhance observational network and improve the atmospheric models in description of cloud microphysics and representation of urban land surfaces.