UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Tirthankar Chakraborty, an earth scientist in the Atmospheric, Climate and Earth Sciences Division of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), will give the talk, “Modeling Spatial Variability of Urban Microclimate,” at 4 p.m. on Monday, March 11, in 112 Walker Building on the University Park campus. The talk will also be available via Zoom.

“Cities modify their local microclimate through changes in radiative, morphological and thermal properties,” Chakraborty said. “Cities are also highly heterogeneous, leading to spatial variability in environmental exposure and climate risks. For instance, poor and disadvantaged communities in U.S. cities often live in the warmest neighborhoods. While a lot of work has been done to improve urban representation in models to isolate the overall urban climate signals, these models are not ideal for examining spatial variability within cities due to poor structural and parameter constraints at these scales.”

In his talk, Chakraborty will give an overview of this spatial variability and its importance, the current limitations in capturing this variability, and potential ways forward by leveraging current-generation satellite observations. Of note, the talk will cover both process-based numerical models as well as data-driven models with a focus on distributional inequality in urban heat exposure based on recently published and upcoming papers. The lessons learned from these multiple past studies can hopefully guide future urban model development efforts to enable them to more accurately inform neighborhood-scale climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Chakraborty is interested in the role of big data, machine learning, and urban informatics to better understand cities and their complexities. He is currently working on improving urban representation in land models and examining extreme events over coastal cities. He often uses the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud computing platform for geospatial analyses and was one of 26 inaugural GEE Developer Experts in the world.

The talk is part of the EarthTalks spring 2024 series, “Urban Systems Science,” which is exploring complex urban systems including interactions between tightly connected human and natural systems both within city boundaries and between cities and the surrounding rural environment. For more information about the spring 2024 series, visit the EarthTalks website.