CLIMATE STUDIES IN ISRAEL - A REVIEW

The paper summarizes three decades of urban climate studies in Israel. These studies focused on heat islands in various towns and the effect of urbanization on rainfall excesses over cities and their downwind areas. While the magnitude of these phenomena and their spatial distribution are not at variance with tropical and extra-tropical urban climate literature, the explanation of the dominant cause of urban rainfall excess in Israel contributes to our understanding of the problem in general. There is some support to the notion that the heat island's thermodynamics combined with the aerodynamic roughness of the urban structure enhances the rainfall rather than air pollution. Another vital contribution of this research lies in the spatial techniques which separate between the effects of enhancement due to cloud seeding operations and inadvertent urban climate modification.