Motivations
As underlined by WMO, “3.5 billion people reside in urban areas. This number is projected to reach 6.3 billion by 2050, increasing from 50% to more than 70% of the world’s population. Cities are centres of creativity and economic progress but they also face many environmental challenges due mainly to air pollution and weather, climate and water-related hazards.” (see this site).
The WMO World Weather Research Programme1 (WWRP) “promotes international and interdisciplinary research for more accurate and reliable forecasts from minutes to seasons, expanding the frontiers of weather science to enhance society’s resilience to high-impact weather and the value of weather information for users. WWRP aims at Seamless Prediction by increasing convergence between weather, climate and environmental approaches.” In the 2013-2026 WWRP implementation plan, activities focus on 4 challenges: High-Impact Weather, Water, Urbanization, Evolving technologies.
The importance of urban scale modeling has been clearly stated in the Urban Integrated Hydro-Meteorological, Climate and Environment Services report (Grimmond et al. 2018). On the Paris agglomeration area as a common area of study, the RDP will especially focus on themes relative to extreme events in summer linked to urbanization: thunderstorms and strong Urban Heat Islands, and their consequences.
