International Association for Urban Climate

The latest issue of “Urban Climate News” (Issue 88, June 2023) is now available.

IAUC088

Dear PALM users,

we are happy to announce the beginning of a new conference series: the PALM Model Conference (PMC), which will take place every year from now on.

The PALM model system has grown into a complex but powerful modeling system for high-resolution numerical simulations. Currently, the model is transitioning to a community model to guarantee further development, as well as build an accessible, flexible, and robust user community in the future.

The PMC will bring developers and users of the PALM Model system together. The goal is to provide a forum for the PALM model community to discuss and advance model development, validation, data generation, and recent PALM-based research. There will be not only plenary sessions with scientific and technical presentations, but also working group and internal project meetings, and other discussion groups of the community model consortium.

Despite the short-notice invitation, we hope to welcome as many PALM developers, users, and interested people as possible to the PMC 2023, which will take place from 11-12 September, 2023! The conference will be held at the DWD headquarters in Offenbach (Frankfurter Str. 135, Offenbach/Main, Germany); Conference participants will be able to attend plenary sessions online or in-person. Schedule is as follows:

• Plenary Sessions (online and in person): Monday, 11 September, 1 pm – Tuesday, 12 September, 3 pm
• Constitutional Meeting of the PALM community (in person only): Tuesday, 12 September, 3-5 pm
  • Presentation of the community model structure
  • Appointment of steering committee members, working groups and other leading units
• PALM steering committee meeting (internal, in person only): Tuesday, 12 September, 5-6 pm
• URSA-MAJOR meeting (internal, in person and online): Monday, 11 September, 4-6 pm

Pleas save the date! You can find more details about the event on the conference’s webpage (conference.palm-model.org). We look forward to your contributions and fruitful discussions.

If you are interested in contributing, please register here: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/PMC-2023

For further questions regarding organizational matters and registration please contact us via email: conference@palm-model.org

Kind regards,

The Organization Team

Prof. Dr. Björn Maronga
Leibniz University Hannover

M.Sc. Astrid Eichhorn-Müller
German Weather Service

M.Sc. Sebastian Giersch
Leibniz University Hannover

Dr. Christopher P. Mount
Leibniz University Hannover

The PALM modelling group of the Institute of Meteorology and Climatology at the Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, is offering a full time 5-day seminar from 14th to 18th August 2023. The seminar will be given in presence [Seminar_announcement, Registration via this form per email to Sebastian Giersch PALM_seminar_registration_form_2023-08_surname].

The PALM model system has been continuously developed at the Institute of Meteorology and Climatology (IMUK), Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH), Germany, since 1997. It is used to study micro- and meso-scale turbulent boundary layer flows in the atmosphere and the ocean. PALM includes a number of advanced features like topography, non-cyclic boundary conditions with turbulent inflow, an embedded Lagrangian particle model allowing explicit treatment of cloud droplet physics, a wind turbine model for simulating complete wind parks including wake effects, or an interface for adding user defined code. Recently, the model has been significantly extended in a collaborative effort of several research institutions for urban applications, which includes explicit treatment of urban surfaces, chemistry, radiation, but also LES-nesting and nesting into larger scale models. Data input and output is in NetCDF format. PALM is optimised for high performance on all kind of state-of-the-art processor architectures and it scales on up to several tens of thousands of processors. PALM is free software and can be redistributed and/or modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License (v3). Download information and a detailed online documentation is available under http://palm-model.org.

PALM_seminar_registration_form_2023-08_surname

Seminar_announcement

The International Association for Urban Climate (IAUC) organises the International Conference on Urban Climate (ICUC) at regular intervals. After two years of postponement due to the pandemic, the 11th International Conference on Urban Climate, ICUC‐11,  will finally be held this year jointly with the AMS Symposium on the Urban Environment in Sydney, Australia, from August 28th to September 1st, 2023.

ICUC‐11  is the continuation of a series of conferences starting in Kyoto, Japan in 1989, followed by those in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1993, Essen, Germany in 1996, Sydney, Australia in 1999, Lodz, Poland in 2003, Göteborg, Sweden in 2006, Yokohama, Japan in 2009, Dublin, Ireland in 2012, Toulouse, France in 2015, and New York, US in 2018. The success of ICUC series helped to create a cohesive international community of urban climate researchers. The ICUC provides an international forum to showcase and discuss the latest research developments, to identify novel research questions, and to implement urban climate knowledge to the design and management of cities. The conferences cater to the interests of a diverse community of meteorologists, climatologists, hydrologists, ecologists, engineers, architects, urban planners, and others interested in the highly interdisciplinary environment.

The next ICUC meeting is envisaged to take place in 2025 – Today we call on the community to start the process of identifying the location and host of ICUC-12!

While the pandemic has underlined the need for in person meetings, it also fostered a rapid development of new complementary formats. Moreover, as a climate science community we cannot ignore the carbon footprint of our events. Thus, we are open to new formats for ICUC-12, such as multi-site events, streaming of plenaries for local “watch parties”, and other hybrid formats. Please be creative!

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As a first step we invite ‘expressions of interest’ from those interested in hosting the ICUC-12.

The expression of interest should be brief (~1 page) and should indicate the proposed location (city, country), organizer’s name, institutional affiliation(s) and the likely time frame for the conference. This information should be submitted as an PDF file to the Secretary of the IAUC, Benjamin Bechtel (iauc-secretary@rub.de, subject: ICUC-12 EOI CITYNAME, use only this E-mail address!) by 5 March, 2023.

We will share all the expressions of interest received with all those who make a submission and with the IAUC Board with the objective to streamline the process and to allow for collaborations/discussions around the bids from those interested in hosting ICUC-12. The board will review all EOI and invite a range of candidate hosts for full proposals.

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Full proposal are due 31 May . They should be maximum 8 pages long (single spaced, 11pt font) and include the following sections:

1. Location for conference. This section should discuss the location and facilities available. Indicate why the proposed location is a good choice for an ICUC conference. Please also indicate hotels, distance between hotels and conference venue, summary details of available meeting rooms, and availability of inexpensive housing options (e.g., for students). In this section please also discuss opportunities for social activities, tours, and local attractions that might be of interest to conference participants and their guests. Information about accessibility and travel (airports, train connections, etc.) is also welcome.
2. Online formats or parts: This section should discuss which parts of the conference will be available online or in decentralised hubs during the conference, and which parts will be published after the conference (e.g. keynote lecture videos, poster PDFs, abstracts, etc.).
3. Proposed timing of conference. This should be a short section discussing the likely time frame for the conference, including one or more alternatives. A brief discussion of the benefits of the proposed timing is desired.
4. Proposed registration or other fees. Provide an initial estimate of the proposed fees for the conference (in USD) based on current prices. Also discuss how surpluses or deficits are to be handled. Budgets should consider different scenarios between 350 and 600 participants  with about 1/3 of the attendees being students); please indicate what the registration fee would cover. The IAUC intends for ICUC to break even; this may require organizers to budget for a small surplus. Conference organizers are responsible for any losses.
5. Preprints and proceedings. Discuss whether there will be a preprint volume or conference proceedings and the mode of dissemination.
6. Institutional/private/government support. Indicate whether there is institutional support for holding the conference at this location. This might include suggestions for a joint conference with another society or organization and access to suitable persons/organization to form a local organizing committee.
7. Familiarity with IAUC and ICUC. Please indicate whether the organizers have attended previous ICUC and/or are familiar with the objectives of IAUC.
8. Carbon budget: Please indicate the estimated carbon footprint and any plans to compensate (parts of) it.

Organizers of the last 3 ICUC conferences are listed below for reference:

• • Aude Lemonsu and Valéry Masson, France (aude.lemonsu@meteo.fr, valery.masson@meteo.fr) (ICUC-9)
  • Jorge Gonzalez and Dev Niyogi, USA (jgonzalezcruz@ccny.cuny.edu, dniyogi@purdue.edu)
  • Negin Nazarian and Melissa Hart (n.nazarian@unsw.edu.au, melissa.hart@unsw.edu.au)

These individuals can provide insight into the necessary financial and institutional support that is needed to run a successful conference. It must be appreciated that IAUC, as a ‘dues-free’ organization, has limited financial means; its main resource is the goodwill and enthusiasm of its members and the knowledge that designated ICUC meetings attract the best of the international urban climate community, and that our past success has created mutually beneficial inter-organisational linkages.

Full proposals should be submitted as single PDF file to Benjamin Bechtel (iauc-secretary@rub.de, subject: “ICUC-12 full proposal CITYNAME”, use only this E-mail address!) by 31 May 2023. We will have initial evaluations with the Board of the IAUC and then ask finalists to prepare a presentation for the Board Meeting at ICUC‐11 (online presentation will be possible).

Issue 86, December 2022

The latest issue of “Urban Climate News” (Issue 86, December 2022) is now available. The newsletter reports on the newly elected board members, a new open collection of 20 flux tower datasets, guidelines on microclimate measurements in tropical cities, the AGU fall meeting and climate news.

Issue 85, September 2022

The latest issue of “Urban Climate News” (Issue 85, September 2022) is now available. The newsletter reports on the new Executive Board, the winners of the Luke Howard and Timothy Oke awards, and the upcoming ICUC-11 conference in Sydney in 2023. It also features new research on urban overheating, projects on urban energy modeling, and special reports on two summer schools and the recent IAUC Virtual Poster Conference.