On the use of local weather types classification to improve climate understanding: An application on the urban climate of Toulouse

Authors : Julia Hidalgo, Renaud Jougla

Publié le 28 janvier 2019 Mis à jour le 16 octobre 2019

Channel Editor Summary: In this paper, Hidalgo and Jougla propose the use of weather-typing techniques for urban planning and future adaptation to climate change. In their work, they carry out a study for the city of Toulouse and include software that enables anyone to apply it.

Abstract / PLOS One

This paper proposes a method based on a local weather type classification approach to facilitate analysis and communication of climate information in local climate studies. Presented herein is an application to urban climatology in Toulouse, France, but the method can be used in other applied fields of climatology as well. To describe the climatic context of this urbanized area, the local weather types that explain the plurality of weather situations Toulouse faces are presented in depth. In order to show the potential for use of this approach, this information is applied to the study of changes in local weather types in terms of frequency and intensity within a series of future climate projections, a classic urban canopy and a series of atmospheric boundary layer analyses, and as a support for communication aimed to initiate urban climate awareness in urban planning practices. The proposed classification method has been coded in an R script and is provided as a supporting information file. The paper concludes that a systematic pre-study using this kind of climatic analysis is a good practice for performing climatic contextualization in local scale applied studies, both for scientific analysis and communication.