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Research into urban meteorology is important in representing the effect of the urban environment on local and regional weather within NWP models.

RAL scientists collaborate with scientists from MMM to understand the complex interactions between the land-surface and the atmosphere and to integrate this knowledge into numerical mesoscale weather prediction and regional climate models. Results from this research have proven to be useful in many applications and has resulted in the development and implementation of modeling systems, such as the unified Noah land-surface modeling (LSM) system in the WRF model and a High-Resolution Data Assimilation System (HRLDAS), to support application of high-resolution numerical weather prediction models.

Within RAL’s Homeland Security projects, urban meteorology plays an important role in protecting the National Capital Region (NCR). There are many locations within the NCR that must be protected against the intentional release of hazardous airborne material. NCAR/RAL has developed data assimilation and modeling systems than are used to provide meteorological input to transport and diffusion (T&D) models applied to the NCR for this purpose.