Parameterization of the urban energy budget with the submesoscale soil model

The thermal component of the Soil Model for Submesoscales, Urbanized Version (SM2-U), is described. SM2-U is an extension on a physical basis of the rural Interactions between Soil, Biosphere, and Atmosphere (ISBA) soil model to urban areas. It evaluates the turbulent energy, moisture, and radiative fluxes at the urban canopy-atmosphere interface to provide lower boundary conditions of high-resolution mesoscale models. Unlike previous urban canopy schemes, SM2-U integrates in a simple way the physical processes inside the urban canopy: the building wall influence is integrated in the pavement temperature equation, allowing the model to compute directly the energy budget of street canyons. The SM2-U model is evaluated on the Marseille, France, city-center energy-budget components measured during the field experiments to constrain models of atmospheric pollution and transport of emissions [Experience sur Site pour Contraindre les Modeles de Pollution Atmospherique et de Transport d'Emissions (ESCOMPTE)] urban boundary layer (UBL) campaign (June-July 2001). The observed behavior of net radiation and heat fluxes is reproduced by SM2-U with a high level of quality, demonstrating that the influence of building walls may be well modeled by modifying the pavement temperature equation.