Back to opportunities | Category Index
These are the intended use-case/justification for one or multiple variable groups. Opportunities are linked to relevant experiment groups. Identifying opportunities helps to provide a structure to map variables against requirements. Each opportunity description will convey why this combination of variables and experiments is important and how they contribute to impact.
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| description | This opportunity can support studies focused on the impacts of climate variability and change on urban population and the built environment. With more than half the global population living in cities, and this number being projected to rapidly increase, this request is essential to support impacts assessments, adaptation strategies, and sustainable and resilient urban development amidst the challenges posed by a changing climate. |
| desirable_ensemble_size | 10 |
| expected_impacts | The requested data will enable: - Direct use of these variables and the derived ones for urban climate-driven risks assessment - These variables will have very consequential implications for policy-making and climate actions, such as urban planning, sustainable development, and urban climate adaptation. - Societal benefits and well-being, such as public health, climate extreme preparedness and resilience, etc. A vast amount of literature supports the need for this data request and describes case studies. Some examples are listed below: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-cities/articles/10.3389/frsc.2021.645613/full https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2019.0124 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231021003745 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acf94c/pdf https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/3/2/391 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378778822008477 https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/16/3/474 |
| justification_of_resources | Over half of the World’s population lives in urban areas and the United Nations expects this to increase to 68% by 2050. This opportunity will provide crucial information to robustly underpin research focused on characterizing and projecting the impacts of climate variability and change on urban populations, settlements, and infrastructure. A forthcoming IPCC Special Report on Cities (https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2024/08/IPCC-61_decisions-adopted-by-the-Panel.pdf) is also proof of the need of coordinated research on this space. Effective urban planning and sustainable development under climate change relies on robust climate projections specific to built landscapes. This includes improving understanding of city-specific risks in the form of extremes, their attribution, slow-onset events, and the compounding and cascading of risks in order to inform those working to reduce vulnerability and exposure across urban systems and sectors, including, but not limited to critical infrastructure, buildings, urban ecosystems and biodiversity, food and population health. A more accurate representation of urban systems is now present in an increasing number of GCMs and ESMs, which will enable inter-model comparisons and uncertainty characterization from urban climate projections unlike in previous CMIP rounds. The requested variables can support studies focused on understanding projected impacts to urban environments (both people and infrastructure). One manifestation of such impacts is the urban heat island, which requires detailed sub-daily variables to be modeled. Another strong impact of weather extremes on cities is given by surface flooding, which depends strongly on precipitation rates. Finally, some requested variable support studies into the urban boundary layer height and near-surface winds, which are needed to characterize urban micro-climates and understand the modulation of the impacts of air pollution. [variable group: urban_impacts_essential] The enhanced temporal resolution requested in the additional variable group will enable analyzes of onset and development of events. [variable group: urban_impacts_additional] |
| lead_theme | Impacts & Adaptation |
| minimum_ensemble_size | 1 |
| name | Vulnerability of urban systems, infrastructure and populations |
| opportunity_id | 40 |
| technical_notes | Ensemble size: min = 1, desirable = 10 |
| data_request_themes | Impacts & Adaptation, Atmosphere, Land & Land-Ice |
| experiment_groups | highresmip2-ia, scenarios, historical |
| mips | |
| time_subsets | 80ac3156-a698-11ef-914a-613c0433d878 |
| variable_groups | urban_impacts_additional, urban_impacts_essential |