Urban-PLUMBER

A multi-site model evaluation project for urban areas

Phase 2 Phase 1 Download project protocol
Mathew Lipson (UNSW), Sue Grimmond (Reading), Martin Best (Met Office),
with observational and modelling participants.

Preston, Melbourne, Australia (AU-Preston)

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Observations (before additional gap filling)

./obs_plots/all_obs_qc.png

Site forcing metadata

  observation_attributes
title Continuous meterological forcing from AU-Preston
summary Flux tower observations from Preston, Melbourne, Australia after quality control, with gap filling from bias corrected ERA5 surface meteorological data. Developed for use in the Urban-PLUMBER model evaluation project. Attribute any use to “Harmonized, gap-filled dataset from 20 urban flux tower sites”
sitename AU-Preston
long_sitename Preston, Melbourne, Australia
version v1
keywords urban, flux tower, eddy covariance, observations
conventions ALMA, CF, ACDD-1.3
featureType timeSeries
license CC-BY-4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
time_coverage_start 1993-01-01 00:00:00
time_coverage_end 2004-11-28 13:00:00
time_analysis_start 2003-08-12 03:30:00
time_shown_in UTC
local_utc_offset_hours 10.0
timestep_interval_seconds 1800.0
timestep_number_spinup 186007
timestep_number_analysis 22772
project Urban-PLUMBER multi-site model evaluation project for urban areas
references Data from “Harmonized gap-filled dataset from 20 urban flux tower sites”: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5517550
project_contact Mathew Lipson (m.lipson@unsw.edu.au), Sue Grimmond (c.s.grimmond@reading.ac.uk), Martin Best (martin.best@metoffice.gov.uk)
observations_contact Andrew Coutts: andrew.coutts@monash.edu; Nigel Tapper: nigel.tapper@monash.edu
observations_reference Coutts, Beringer and Tapper (2007a): https://doi.org/10.1175/JAM2462.1; Coutts, Beringer and Tapper (2007b) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2006.08.030
date_created 2022-09-22 14:38:53
source https://github.com/matlipson/urban-plumber_pipeline
other_references ERA5: Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) (2017): https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/home NCI Australia: http://doi.org/10.25914/5f48874388857
acknowledgements Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service Information 2021 (ERA5 hourly data on single levels). Data from replica hosted by NCI Australia.
comment -
history v0.9 (2021-09-08): beta issue; v1 (2022-09-15): with publication in ESSD

Site images

   
Region Regional map. © OpenStreetMap site_map Site map with 500 m radius. © OpenStreetMap
site_photo Site photo. © Coutts et al. (2007) site_sat Site aerial photo with 500 m radius. © OpenStreetMap, Microsoft

Maps developed from: Hrisko, J. (2020). Geographic Visualizations in Python with Cartopy. Maker Portal.

Site characteristics

id parameter value units source doi
1 latitude -37.7306 degrees_north Coutts et al. (2007a) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2006.08.030
2 longitude 145.014 degrees_east Coutts et al. (2007a) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2006.08.030
3 ground_height 93 m Coutts et al. (2007a) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2006.08.030
4 measurement_height_above_ground 40 m Coutts et al. (2007b) https://doi.org/10.1175/JAM2462.1
5 impervious_area_fraction 0.62 1 Grimmond et al. (2011) https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2227
6 tree_area_fraction 0.225 1 Grimmond et al. (2011) https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2227
7 grass_area_fraction 0.15 1 Grimmond et al. (2011) https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2227
8 bare_soil_area_fraction 0.005 1 Grimmond et al. (2011) https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2227
9 water_area_fraction 0 1 Grimmond et al. (2011) https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2227
10 roof_area_fraction 0.445 1 Grimmond et al. (2011) https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2227
11 road_area_fraction 0.13 1 Grimmond et al. (2011) https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2227
12 other_paved_area_fraction 0.045 1 Grimmond et al. (2011) https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2227
13 building_mean_height 6.4 m Grimmond et al. (2011) https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2227
14 tree_mean_height 5.7 m Nice et al. (2018) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2017.12.008
15 roughness_length_momentum 0.4 m Coutts et al. (2007b) (anemometric) https://doi.org/10.1175/JAM2462.1
16 displacement_height 7.92 m Coutts (2006) p228 https://monash.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/MON:au_everything:catau21144060160001751
17 canyon_height_width_ratio 0.42 1 Grimmond et al. (2011) https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2227
18 wall_to_plan_area_ratio 0.4 1 Grimmond et al. (2011) https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2227
19 average_albedo_at_midday 0.151 1 median of observations -
20 resident_population_density 2940 person/km2 Coutts et al. (2007a) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2006.08.030
21 anthropogenic_heat_flux_mean 11 W/m2 Best and Grimmond (2016) https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1554-3
22 topsoil_clay_fraction 0.18 1 OpenLandMap https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2525663
23 topsoil_sand_fraction 0.72 1 OpenLandMap https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2525662
24 topsoil_bulk_density 1230 kg/m3 OpenLandMap https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2525665
25 building_height_standard_deviation 3.02 m estimated, see notes derived from avg. building height and eq. 2 of Kanda et al. 2013
26 roughness_length_momentum_mac 0.12 m Macdonald method derived from morphology using eq. 26 of Macdonald et al. (1998)
27 displacement_height_mac 4.57 m Macdonald method derived from morphology using eq. 23 of Macdonald et al. (1998)
28 roughness_length_momentum_kanda 0.18 m Kanda method derived from morphology using eq. 12a of Kanda et al. (2013)
29 displacement_height_kanda 9.3 m Kanda method derived from morphology using eq. 10a of Kanda et al. (2013)

Site forcing

SWdown forcing

SWdown

LWdown forcing

LWdown

Tair forcing

Tair

Qair forcing

Qair

PSurf forcing

PSurf

Rainf forcing

Rainf

Snowf forcing

Snowf

Wind_N forcing

Wind_N

Wind_E forcing

Wind_E

Quality control (qc) and gap filling procedure

QC process on observations

  1. Out-of-range: removal of unphysical values (e.g. negative shortwave radiation) using the ALMA expected range protocol.
  2. Night: nocturnal shortwave radiation set to zero, excluding civil twilight (when the sun is 6° below the horizon).
  3. Constant: four or more timesteps with the same value (excluding zero values for shortwave radiation, rainfall and snowfall) are removed as suspicious.
  4. Outlier: remove values outside ±4 standard deviations for each hour in a rolling 30-day window (to account for diurnal and seasonal variations). Repeat with a larger tolerance (± 5 standard deviations) until no outliers remain. The outlier test is not applied to precipitation.
  5. Visual: remaining suspect readings are removed manually via visual inspection.

Gap-filling process

LWdown diurnal qc

./obs_plots/LWdown_obs_qc_diurnal.png

LWup diurnal qc

./obs_plots/LWup_obs_qc_diurnal.png

PSurf diurnal qc

./obs_plots/PSurf_obs_qc_diurnal.png

Qair diurnal qc

./obs_plots/Qair_obs_qc_diurnal.png

Qh diurnal qc

./obs_plots/Qh_obs_qc_diurnal.png

Qle diurnal qc

./obs_plots/Qle_obs_qc_diurnal.png

Qtau diurnal qc

./obs_plots/Qtau_obs_qc_diurnal.png

Rainf diurnal qc

./obs_plots/Rainf_obs_qc_diurnal.png

SWdown diurnal qc

./obs_plots/SWdown_obs_qc_diurnal.png

SWup diurnal qc

./obs_plots/SWup_obs_qc_diurnal.png

Snowf diurnal qc

./obs_plots/Snowf_obs_qc_diurnal.png

Tair diurnal qc

./obs_plots/Tair_obs_qc_diurnal.png

Wind_E diurnal qc

./obs_plots/Wind_E_obs_qc_diurnal.png

Wind_N diurnal qc

./obs_plots/Wind_N_obs_qc_diurnal.png

Bias correction diurnal comparison

Four methods drawing on ERA5 reanalysis are compared relative to the quality-controlled flux tower data. The methods are:

  1. ERA5: the nearest land based 0.25° resolution ERA5 grid (i.e. without bias correction)
  2. WFDE5: the nearest WFDE5 grid (which use 0.5° gridded monthly observations for bias correction)
  3. UP: the Urban-PLUMBER methods used in this collection (using site observations for bias correction)
  4. LN: linear methods based on FLUXNET2015 (using site observations for bias correction)

ERA5 bias correction

The UP methods are as follows:

Mean absolute error (MAE) is shown in the legend.

Tair diurnal bias correction

./era_correction/AU-Preston_Tair_all_diurnal.png

Qair diurnal bias correction

./era_correction/AU-Preston_Qair_all_diurnal.png

PSurf diurnal bias correction

./era_correction/AU-Preston_PSurf_all_diurnal.png

LWdown diurnal bias correction

./era_correction/AU-Preston_LWdown_all_diurnal.png

SWdown diurnal bias correction

./era_correction/AU-Preston_SWdown_all_diurnal.png

Wind diurnal bias correction

./era_correction/AU-Preston_Wind_all_diurnal.png

Rainf diurnal bias correction

./era_correction/AU-Preston_Rainf_all_diurnal.png

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