Georgescu (2026) The birth of a field through a marriage of scales: urban meteorological modeling meets regional climate modeling

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Environmental Research Letters
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-06-25
• Authors: Matei Georgescu
• DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ae8285

Research Groups

• Department of Atmospheric Science, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
• Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Climate Modeling Branch, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

Short Summary

This review synthesizes the development of urban climate modeling by tracing its parallel evolution with regional climate modeling and urban meteorology. The study proposes a definition of urban climate modeling that distinguishes it from its parent disciplines.

Objective

• Investigate the historical development of urban climate modeling in relation to urban meteorological modeling and regional climate modeling

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global, with focus on urban areas
• Temporal Scale: Long-term (decadal) to centennial scales

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Not specified; focuses on conceptual framework development
• Data sources: Literature review of existing studies in urban meteorology and regional climate modeling

Main Results

• Urban climate modeling emerged through the selective inheritance of strengths from its parent disciplines, combining physically explicit treatment of the built environment with hierarchical scale translation and climatological framing.
• A definition of urban climate modeling is proposed to distinguish it from urban meteorological modeling.

Contributions

• Provides a clarifying definition of urban climate modeling that distinguishes it from its parent disciplines, addressing ambiguity in terminology and decision relevance.
• Outlines a research framework for advancing urban climate modeling through scale-aware coupling strategies.

Funding

• This review was not funded by any specific project or program.

Citation

@article{Georgescu2026birth,
  author = {Georgescu, Matei},
  title = {The birth of a field through a marriage of scales: urban meteorological modeling meets regional climate modeling},
  journal = {Environmental Research Letters},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1088/1748-9326/ae8285},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae8285}
}