840 JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY VOLUME 53

Effects of Urbanization on the Temperature Inversion Breakup in a Mountain

Valley with Implications for Air Quality

ANGELA M. RENDON, JUAN F. SALAZAR, AND CARLOS A. PALACIO

El Grupo de Ingeniera y Gesti

on Ambiental, Escuela Ambiental, Facultad de Ingeniera, Universidad
de Antioquia, Medelln, Colombia

VOLKMAR WIRTH AND BJORN BROTZ

Institute for Atmospheric Physics, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Mainz, Germany

(Manuscript received 14 May 2013, in final form 2 January 2014)

ABSTRACT

Many cities located in valleys with limited ventilation experience serious air pollution problems. The
ventilation of an urban valley can be limited not only by orographic barriers, but also by urban heat island
induced circulations and/or the capping effect of temperature inversions. Furthermore, land-use/-cover
changes caused by urbanization alter the dynamics of temperature inversions and urban heat islands, thereby
affecting air quality in an urban valley. By means of idealized numerical simulations, it is shown that in
a mountain valley subject to temperature inversions urbanization can have an important influence on air
quality through effects on the inversion breakup. Depending on the urban area fraction in the simulations, the
breakup time changes, the cross-valley wind system can evolve from a confined to an open system during the
daytime, the slope winds can be reversed by the interplay between the urban heat island and the temperature
inversion, and the breakup pattern can migrate from one dominated by the growth of the convective boundary
layer to one also involving the removal of mass from the valley floor by the upslope winds. The analysis
suggests that the influence of urbanization on the air quality of an urban valley may lead to contrasting and
possibly counterintuitive effects when considering temperature inversions. More urban land does not nec-
essarily imply worse air quality, even when considering that the amount of pollutants emitted grows with
increased urbanization.

1. Introduction and the atmosphere (Arnfield 2003; Grimmond 2007;

Kanda 2007). Therefore, land-use/-cover changes in-
Many cities located in valleys with limited ventilation
duced by urbanization modify the dynamics of local
experience serious air pollution problems of concern for
winds (e.g., Lee and Kim 2008), the urban heat island
public health (Edgerton et al. 1999; Romero et al. 1999;
(UHI) (e.g., Chen et al. 2006), and the local temperature
Panday and Prinn 2009). The transport of pollutants out
inversions, with impacts on air quality and implications
of an urban valley atmosphere can be limited not only
for urban planning (Romero et al. 1999; Janhall et al.
by orographic barriers, but also by urban heat island
2006; Rizwan et al. 2008; Allen et al. 2011).
induced circulations (Haeger-Eugensson and Holmer
Although the term urbanization may refer to different
1999; Savijarvi and Liya 2001) and/or the presence of
processes of land-use/-cover change, here we use it only
temperature inversions near the surface (Janhall et al.
to refer to an expansion of a homogeneous urban area
2006; Yao and Zhong 2009). On a local scale, the char-
(further details are given below). Therefore, as a sim-
acteristics of the urban land have a large influence on the
plification, we are not considering processes such as
heat and momentum transfer between the land surface
population densification or any spatial heterogeneity
within the urban area.
The temperature inversion is a common phenomenon
Corresponding author address: Angela M. Rend

on, GIGA, Escuela
Ambiental, Facultad de Ingenier
a, Universidad de Antioquia
in the lower atmosphere of urban areas and mountain
(UdeA), Calle 70, No. 52-21, Of. 20-414, Medell
n, Colombia. valleys (Oke 1995; Whiteman 2000). Although the temper-
E-mail: angela.rendon@udea.edu.co ature inversion is sometimes defined in terms of absolute

DOI: 10.1175/JAMC-D-13-0165.1

2014 American Meteorological Society

APRIL 2014
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atmospheric temperature (e.g., Jacobson 2005, p. 54),
here we consider that an inversion occurs when the po-
tential temperature increases with height above the
surface (i.e., when the potential temperature gradient
is positive; Whiteman 1982). The atmospheric layer
within which the potential temperature gradient is pos-
itive is termed an inversion layer.
The process of destruction of the inversion layer is
defined as the breakup of the temperature inversion
(BTI). Over flat, homogeneous terrain, inversions are
destroyed predominantly by the upward growth of a
convective boundary layer (CBL) from the ground. In
a valley, however, inversions are destroyed not only by
a CBL that develops over valley surfaces, but also as a
result of the removal of air from the base of the inversion
by the upslope flows that develop over heated sidewalls,
thus inducing subsidence warming over the valley center
(Whiteman 1982; Zoumakis and Efstathiou 2006). The
interplay between the growth of a CBL and the removal
of air from the base of the inversion leads to three dif-
ferent patterns of BTI in mountain valleys (Whiteman
and McKee 1982; Whiteman 1982). These BTI patterns
will be described and considered in section 4.
The dynamics of the temperature inversion (forma-
tion and breakup) is mainly driven by the heating of the
surface, which is largely influenced by urbanization.
These dynamics can exert strong effects on the air
quality of urban areas, especially when they are located
in complex terrain such as mountain valleys. A number
of studies confirm the association between the occur-
rence and persistence of temperature inversions and the
presence of high concentrations of air pollutants over
urban areas. For instance, one of the worst national air
pollution episodes in the United States took place in
the city of Logan in the Cache Valley of Utah and was
largely caused by the trapping of pollutants owing to a
strong inversion (Malek et al. 2006). Also, heavy air pol-
lution events experienced in Santiago, Chile (Rutllant and
Garreaud 1995), and the Lanzhou urban valley, China
(Chu et al. 2008), have been associated with low-level
temperature inversions. In several Nordic urban sites,
winter temperature inversions are a major cause for ex-
ceeding air-quality legislation thresholds for traffic-
related pollutants. In such situations the BTI exerts
a strong influence on air quality through the effects on the
rates of vertical mixing and the consequent distribution of
urban aerosols (Janhall et al. 2006; Olofson et al. 2009).
Previous studies have shown that the dynamics and
effects of the temperature inversion vary depending on
several factors, especially those associated with the to-
pography of the terrain and the surface energy balance.
For instance, in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada,
the air quality impacts of emissions from industry and
841
traffic are exacerbated by temperature inversions and
strongly controlled by the complex topography of the
terrain (Wallace et al. 2010). The numerical simulations
by Colette et al. (2003) show that the lifetime of the
inversion layer is different in valleys with different
widths and depths, and that the topographic shading
can delay the BTI. According to the simulations by
Anquetin et al. (1998), the BTI also varies with season,
because in summer the more effective solar radiation
speeds up the BTI. This seasonal variation may alterna-
tively be interpreted, in a more general way, as a conse-
quence of increasing the heating of the surface (as it is in
summer), which could be a result of land-use/-cover
changes (such as those caused by urbanization). This is
consistent with the simulations of Bader and McKee
(1985), which show that decreasing the surface heating
rate in a valley delays the BTI, although the development
of the structure of the boundary layer proceeds similarly.
This latter study also shows that as the valley floor widens,
the slope effects become increasingly less important until
the valley atmosphere behaves similarly to boundary
layers over flat terrain.
Given the dependence of the BTI on the topography
of the terrain, the present study is limited in that we did
not investigate different topographical settings. An
analysis of this will be given in a forthcoming paper.
However, studying the influence of urbanization on the
temperature inversion dynamics through its effects on
the surface heating is critical for understanding the in-
terplay between land-cover change, local meteorology,
and air quality. Cities obviously produce air pollution,
but what has been less well studied is the impact of the
boundary layer dynamics produced by the surface en-
ergy balance on this pollution (Masson 2006). In this
regard, here we show that in an urban valley subject to
temperature inversions, land-use/-cover changes result-
ing from urbanization, which include changes in the size
of the UHI, have an important influence on air quality
through effects on the BTI. To show this, we carried
through and analyzed idealized simulations with an
EulerianLagrangian numerical model (EULAG) to
study the BTI in a mountain valley with varying frac-
tions of urban and rural land cover, as well as the
transport of a passive tracer released from the urban
surface. Although idealized, our model experiment is
loosely based in a reference urban valley, the Aburr
a
valley in the Colombian Andes, where urbanization has
been progressing rapidly and the urban area (Medell
n
and its neighboring cities) has expanded beyond the
valley floor toward the sidewalls. Our analyses examine
various effects resulting from the urban land expansion.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows:
the model and the experiment are described in section 2,
842 JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY VOLUME 53

results are presented in section 3 and discussed in section valley every 20% between 0% and 100%, and then we
4, and the conclusions are drawn in section 5. compared the results between the six cases. In all cases,
the urban area is homogeneous and grows symmetrically
from the center of the valley toward the sloping side-
2. Model description and experiment design
walls. It is important to bear in mind that a 40% or
a. Model description greater urban area fraction implies that urbanization
spreads to the valley sidewalls (e.g., Fig. 2 in section 3,
The numerical model employed in this study has been
where the thick outline of the orography marks the ur-
thoroughly documented in the literature, mainly in
ban area). All simulations started with a condition of
studies by P. K. Smolarkiewicz and others (Prusa et al.
temperature inversion and were performed during the
2008 and references therein). EULAG is a nonhydrostatic
daytime between 0600 local standard time (LST) and
model for simulating fluid flows across a wide range of
1800 LST.
scales and geophysical flows, whose name refers to its
The urban and rural areas are distinguished only by
capability of solving the underlying anelastic equations
differences in the specified heat flux. However, we tested
within either an Eulerian (flux form) or a Lagrangian
the sensitivity of our results to the inclusion of roughness
(advective form) framework. Different variants of
effects under the assumption that the urban areas are
EULAG have been applied to investigate orographic
rougher than the rural ones, and found no significant
flows (Welch et al. 2001; Piotrowski et al. 2010), flows
differences. In these test runs the drag coefficients were
around urban buildings (Smolarkiewicz et al. 2007),
0.01 and 0.001 for the urban and rural land, respectively.
turbulence (Smolarkiewicz and Prusa 2004), cloud dy-
We assume that the sensible heat flux from urban areas
namics (Andrejczuk et al. 2004), and global atmospheric
is higher than that from rural ones, which agrees with the
circulation (Smolarkiewicz et al. 2001), among other
idea that the urban energy balance is typically charac-
topics generally related to the fluid dynamics of com-
terized by a high Bowen ratio owing to the thermal
pressible or incompressible fluids. EULAG has been
properties and impermeability of urban surfaces like
found to simulate the evolution of a daytime valley wind
concrete or asphalt (Offerle et al. 2006; Nadeau et al.
system, with results qualitatively similar to those of nine
2009). For instance, Offerle et al. (2006) reported values
other mesoscale models [see the intercomparison study
of the Bowen ratio for an urban area ranging from ;0.5
by Schmidli et al. (2011)].
to ;4.5 depending on the fraction of the vegetated
EULAG admits several optional formulations of
surface. The idealized diurnal cycle of sensible heat flux
the equations of motion. Here, we are concerned with
was defined through the function
valley-scale thermal flows, so we use EULAG as a non-
hydrostatic model that solves the anelastic equations of
 
1 2p
motion in terrain-following coordinates, under the Qh (x, t) 5 Q r (x) 1 2 cos t , (1)
2 T
Ogura and Phillips (1962) approximation of the atmo-
sphere. The model employs an explicit predictive equation
where Qh(x, t) is the spacetime varying flux of sensible
for turbulent kinetic energy (TKE hereinafter) and uses
heat (J m22 s21); Qr(x) is a maximum reference value
a local Deardorff-type TKE closure scheme derived
depending on whether the surface at x is urban [Qr(x) 5
for large eddy simulations for which the length scale
300 J m22 s21] or rural [Qr(x) 5 90 J m22 s21]; t is the
is based on the grid spacing (Deardorff 1980). Surface
time since the initial time (0600 LST), ranging from 0 to
drag is accounted for through the usual bulk formula
12 h; and T is the total time of the simulation (T 5 12 h).
with a drag coefficient (CD 5 0.01). Furthermore, we
Note that the sensible heat flux peaks at noon.
modify the EULAG code to introduce a time- and space-
There is no dependence of Qh(x, t) on y (the along-
varying forcing that represents the diurnal cycle of sensible
valley direction), because of the symmetry and orien-
heat flux over the mountain valley (see section 2b).
tation of the valley (topography is described below in
section 2c). We assume that the valley is oriented east
b. Experiment design
west and located at 08 latitude, so that the sun follows
The model experiment performed in this study is a path along the valley, and there is no topographic
based on the general idea that the comparison of paired shading. The Coriolis effect is neglected because of the
simulations with different representations of land cover spatial scale of our study and the location of the valley.
reveals the environmental effects of land-cover change The sensible heat function [Eq. (1)] prescribes a sym-
(Bonan 2008). We performed simulations with different metric sensible heat flux throughout the simulations.
land-cover distributions involving two classesurban This is in good agreement with previous simulations
and rural landvarying the urban area fraction in the of thermally driven valley winds by Serafin and Zardi
APRIL 2014
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(2010a), where the symmetry of the surface forcing is
substantially maintained during the simulation time (see
their Fig. 1), although they did not prescribe sensible
heat but simulated it through a bulk relationship.
Equation (1) involves the assumption that the shape of
the diurnal cycle of sensible heat is similar to that of net
solar radiation (see, e.g., Grimmond and Oke 2002;
Matzinger et al. 2003). Values produced by Eq. (1) are
on the same order of magnitude as those reported in the
literature for different urban and rural areas (e.g.,
Wesson et al. 2001; Grimmond and Oke 2002; Jung et al.
2011) and can be considered as being representative of
our reference urban valley (the Aburr
a valley).
To obtain insights into the air quality impacts, we
simulate the transport of a passive tracer released from
the urban area, by assuming that this area acts as a uni-
form and continuous source, that is, there is no spatial or
temporal heterogeneity of emissions. Urban areas can
be considered one of the major sources of air pollution
as a result of multiple factors such as the emission of
gases by the industrial (Rosenzweig et al. 2010) or the
transport sectors (Colvile et al. 2001). Hence, when the
percentage of urban land cover increases, the amount of
pollutants released to the atmosphere is also expected to
increase.
In summary, we assume that urbanization inherently
leads to an areal expansion of both the UHI and the
emission area, which is consistent with the idea that, for
instance, as the urban land expands so does the number
of cars in the city. Intraurban variations of pollution
(Wilson et al. 2005) and surface energy fluxes (Offerle
et al. 2006) are still very complex issues that are strongly
dependent on the particularities of each city. Therefore,
we regard our assumption of intraurban homogeneity as
the simplest possibility, although other assumptions
8
> 1,
>
>
>
<1
 
pjx 2 x0 j 2 y x
z(x) 5 h 1 2 cos
>
> 2 sx
>
>
:
0,
where z(x) is the height of the terrain above the valley
floor (m), h is the maximum depth of the valley (h 5
1000 m), x0 is the x coordinate of the center of the valley
(x0 5 12 800 m), sx is the width of the sloping sidewalls
(sx 5 8000 m), and yx is the half-width of the valley floor
(y x 5 2000 m). Equation (2) represents a symmetrical
cross section, constant along the y direction. In ad-
dition, two 2800-m-length plateaus are included in
the modeling domain in order to have the lateral
843
may be raised as well. Neither chemical reactions nor
the radiative effects of pollutants in the atmosphere are
considered, and we do not include moisture in our sim-
ulations at this stage, because our main concern is re-
lated to thermally driven winds on a dry atmosphere,
and to the BTI, which is mainly driven by heating pro-
cesses (Whiteman and McKee 1982). This approach is
similar to that of Anquetin et al. (1998), Colette et al.
(2003), and Serafin and Zardi (2010a). We will leave
consideration of moist processes and the intraurban
spatial heterogeneity to future work.
c. Model setup
1) TOPOGRAPHY AND SIMULATION DOMAIN
The model experiments are carried out in a three-
dimensional domain of 25 600 m in the x direction (across
the valley) and 6400 m in the y direction (along the valley),
extending from the surface to a height of 6400 m (z di-
rection). Figure 2, described below in section 3, clarifies
this geometry by showing the x and z directions in the
cross section of the valley. The extension in the y di-
rection (normal to the plane shown in Fig. 2) allows us to
capture the dynamics of large convective eddies inside
the valley, as well as to reduce the influence of the
boundary effects in the mouths of the valley on the rest
of the domain. The depth of the domain (z) permits us
to represent the evolution of vertical motions and
thermal plumes over the valley. The dimensions of the
modeling domain are similar to that of Anquetin et al.
(1998), Colette et al. (2003), and Serafin and Zardi
(2010b), and they are representative of our reference
valley.
Following Rampanelli et al. (2004), the idealized to-
pography is represented by the function
jx 2 x0 j . sx 1 y x
, y x , jx 2 x0 j , sx 1 y x , (2)
jx 2 x0 j , yx
boundaries far from the top of the sidewalls. The
average steepness of the sidewalls is 12.5%, and
the transitions between them and the plateaus and
the valley floor are smooth in order to prevent abrupt
changes in wind direction. The vertical grid is set
with terrain-following coordinates stretched with a
minimum grid size of 25 m at the surface and a maxi-
mum grid size of 121 m at the top of the simulation
domain.
844 JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY
TABLE 1. Summary of the model setup.
Parameter Value
Simulation domain (nx, ny, nz) 512, 128, 128
Horizontal grid resolution Dx, Dy (m) 50
Vertical grid resolution Dz (m) 25121
Time step Dt (s) 2 vertical profiles of u in the center of the valley (section
Initial simulation time (LST) 0600
Final simulation time (LST) 1800
Time of simulation (h) 12
Initial BruntV ala frequency (s21)
ais 0.019
2) INITIAL AND BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
The simulations are initialized with a temperature
inversion profile that is constant over the whole valley
with a BruntVaisala frequency of N2 5 0.019 s21, corre-
sponding to a vertical potential temperature gradient of
11 K km21 in the lowest 800 m above the valley floor,
which represents a strong temperature inversion. Above
the top of the inversion we assume neutral stratification
(u/z 5 0 for z . 800 m). We assume that the atmo-
sphere is at rest at the beginning of the simulations.
These initial conditions are similar to those used in
previous studies of the temperature inversion in ideal-
ized mountain valleys by Anquetin et al. (1998) and
Colette et al. (2003).
Since we are concerned with the local valley winds, we
neglect the influence of synoptic winds, under the as-
sumption of weak synoptic conditions. To represent this,
all the lateral boundary conditions are defined as peri-
odic. The bottom and the top of the domain are treated
as impermeable boundaries. A Rayleigh damping layer
of 2000 m is included below the top of the domain, to
avoid unrealistic reflection of upward-propagating in-
ternal gravity waves aloft (Warner 2011). The model
setup is summarized in Table 1.
3. Temperature inversion breakup and
wind fields in the valley
In this section we present the simulations of the BTI
process in the valley (see section 2 for details) under
different urban and rural land distributions: recall that
the urban area fraction in the valley varies from 0% to
100% every 20%. Our results show the time variation of
the potential temperature u profile in the center of the
valley, the horizontal u and vertical w wind fields, and
the resolved TKE in the valley cross section, during the
daytime from 0600 to 1800 LST. Our analyses are fo-
cused on the dynamics of the atmosphere in the valley
cross section (the x direction), so all of the results are
averaged along the valley (the y direction). We numer-
ically verify that this averaging procedure does not af-
fect the qualitative behavior of our results; there are
VOLUME 53
only minor quantitative changes with respect to a single
cross section in the center of the valley. The plots do not
show the entire simulation domain but only a part of it
around the valley, which is the selected region of interest.
We first consider the BTI as described by consecutive
3a), then we consider several features of the cross-valley
wind system and its relationship with BTI (section 3b),
and finally we give insights into the impacts of the cir-
culation on the transport of pollutants released from the
urban surface (section 3c).
a. Temperature inversion breakup
The time variation of vertical u profiles in the center of
the valley for different percentages of urban land cover
is depicted in Fig. 1, where the inversion layer is evident.
This layer is destroyed faster (i.e., the BTI is acceler-
ated) as the urban area fraction increases, which is in
agreement with the simulations by Bader and McKee
(1985), Anquetin et al. (1998), and Colette et al. (2003),
showing that decreasing the surface heating rate in a
valley delays the BTI. Note that the inversion layer is
finally destroyed at a time when the height of the CBL
grows to the height of the top of the inversion layer, thus
producing a constant potential temperature atmosphere
in the valley (see, e.g., Fig. 2 of Whiteman 1982).
Interestingly, there are only small differences be-
tween the sequences of u profiles corresponding to the
highest percentages (80% and 100%) of urban land
cover (Figs. 1e,f), thus suggesting that there is an upper
percentage of urban land above which the BTI is not
further accelerated by augmenting the urban area frac-
tion. We attribute this to the location of the ruralurban
fringe relative to the altitude of the top of the inversion
layer: for the highest urban area fractions the former is
above the latter, so in both cases all of the land below the
top of the inversion layer is urban and, therefore, the
heating of the surface is the same. Furthermore, any
additional heat from the urban land above the inversion
top is distributed over a very large volume and, there-
fore, it is hardly noticeable. We interpret this as a satu-
ration effect in our model setup, which occurs when the
heat released from the surface is distributed either in
the atmospheric column above the inversion layer or in
the entire atmospheric column after the BTI. This effect
cannot be generalized to all situations because it may
change if, for instance, the conditions above the inver-
sion were not neutral.
For the lowest percentages of urban land (#20%;
Figs. 1a,b), although the depth of the inversion layer
decreases throughout the daytime, a temperature in-
version remains until the end of the simulations. This
is in agreement with observations of the temperature
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FIG. 1. Vertical u profiles taken every hour from 0600 to 1800 LST in the center of the valley. Each panel corresponds to a different urban
area fraction (ranging from 0% to 100%) and shows the evolution in time from the initial inversion profile on the left to the final profile on
the right. The arrow indicates the profile corresponding to 1200 LST, and the horizontal dotted line indicates the altitude of the top of the
valley.

inversion in mountain valleys subject to weak thermal
forcing, where a temperature inversion can persist
throughout the day and can even remain in the valley for
several days (Savov et al. 2002).
b. Wind fields
The BTI is intrinsically related to the dynamics of
thermal cross-valley winds. The components of the
mean wind field in the valley cross section for different
urban area fractions are depicted every 3 h in Fig. 2
(vertical wind component w) and Fig. 3 (horizontal wind
component u). These wind fields are characterized by
various features that are described below.
In all simulations (rural and urban valleys), the flow
field is initially symmetric owing to the symmetry of the
topography and of the initial conditions. Symmetry is
substantially maintained on the slopes throughout the
daytime but not above the valley floor because of the
development of randomly spaced thermals. The develop-
ment of these thermals is in good agreement with the
simulations of thermally driven winds in a wide valley by
Serafin and Zardi (2010a).
Although the initial atmospheric conditions and the
topography are the same in all valleys, the slope winds
evolve differently depending on the urban area fraction.
The rural valley produces relatively weak upslope winds
prevailing during the daytime with a maximum speed
around 0.5 m s21. These upslope flows are compensated
by horizontal winds below the top of the inversion layer,
thus forming a closed circulation within the CBL. The
persistence of upslope winds during the daytime is the
typical condition in mountain valleys (Whiteman 2000,
p. 187). These results are an example of a confined cir-
culation system within a valley (e.g., Li et al. 2009), which
can be caused by a temperature inversion (Yao and Zhong
2009). Closed circulations within a CBL have also been
observed in regions with steep terrain (Reuten et al. 2005).
The atmosphere in the urban valleys is subject to
stronger vertical mixing than that of the rural valley, as
a result of the higher heating of the urban surface. This
produces differences in the slope wind patterns. In the
40% urbanized valley, downslope winds appear close to
the ruralurban fringe, as distinct from the prevailing
upslope winds in the rural and more urbanized valleys
(Figs. 2di and 3di). This difference can be explained
by effects related to both the urban heat island and the
temperature inversion. The urban heat island in the core
of the 40% urbanized valley, resulting from the differ-
ential heating of the surface (urban or rural), creates
buoyant thermals that induce air convergence from the
846 JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY
FIG. 2. Consecutive longitudinal mean fields of the cross-valley w in the (left) rural, (center) 40% urbanized, and (right) 80% urbanized
valleys. Isentropes are shown every 1 K. The thick (thin) outline of the orography marks the urban (rural) area.
surrounding rural areas. It is well known that the dif-
ferential heating of the surface promotes the formation
of rising thermals (Jacobson 2005, p. 22). Furthermore,
thermal convection in the core of the valley, along with
the presence of the inversion layer that restricts the
vertical free convection, causes downslope compensating
winds below the inversion layer and close to the rural
urban fringe. The heat islands effect on creating down-
slope winds toward the city near the surface was also found
in simulations of local winds in a valley city by Savijarvi
and Liya (2001). As will be shown in section 4, downslope
winds also appear in the 20% urbanized valley.
In contrast to the downslope winds found in the 20%
and 40% urbanized valleys, upslope winds prevail
throughout the daytime in the 80% urbanized valley.
We attribute this difference to effects related to the
extension of urban land along the sidewalls of the valley.
Note that for 80% of urban land the outer edge of the
VOLUME 53
urban area is close to the mountaintop, while for 20% or
40% of urban land this boundary is close to or within the
valley floor. When the sidewalls are highly urbanized,
the heating of the surface enhances thermal convection
and upslope flows, in turn strengthening the transport
of air from the bottom of the valley to the atmosphere
above the inversion layer. As a consequence, the com-
pensating flow responsible for the downslope winds in
the 20% and 40% urbanized valleys does not appear in
the 80% urbanized valley.
Upslope winds detach from the ridgetops and create
thermal plumes in the rural and urban valleys. The in-
tensity of the plumes is nearly the same at 0900 LST in
all cases (Figs. 2ac), but evident differences appear at
noon: while the rural and the 40% urbanized valleys
produce upward motions in the mountaintops with
maximum speeds of around 0.3 m s21 (Figs. 2d,e), in the
more urbanized valley thermal plumes reach maximum
APRIL 2014
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FIG. 3. As in Fig. 2, but for u.
updraft speeds of about 1.0 m s21 (Fig. 2f). The differ-
ence between the more urbanized valley and the other
two valleys suggests that the extra heat produced from
the extended urban land is resulting in more energetic
plumes. On the other hand, the similarity between the
rural and the 40% urbanized valleys can be related to
the downslope winds appearing in the second case. The
higher heating of the surface in the 40% urbanized
valley, in comparison to the rural one, does not result in
more energetic thermal plumes because the extra energy
is expended in the circulation involving the downslope
winds, as a result of the interplay between the urban heat
island and the temperature inversion. Moreover, such
extra energy results in more and larger plumes within
the CBL of the 40% urbanized valley than in the rural
one.
Thermal plumes detaching from the mountaintops are
linked to compensating horizontal winds blowing to-
ward the center of the valley with maximum intensities
847
of about 2.0 m s21, in a layer approximately 700 m above
the mountaintop level (i.e., z ;1700 m). These winds
advect warm air and thermal energy from the plumes
toward the valley center, in turn producing air sub-
sidence. This compensating flow is similar to that found
by Serafin and Zardi (2010a), and it is in agreement with
the fact that the ascending motions related to upslope
flows and thermal plumes must be compensated by de-
scending flows elsewhere, because of mass continuity.
However, in contrast to that study, we also found that air
subsidence does not reach the valley core since the de-
scending winds deviate toward the mountaintops as
a consequence of the inversion layer, which restricts the
downward motions. Hence, we found horizontal winds
diverging from the valley center just above the inversion
layer, so that a circulation cell is evident above such
a layer (Figs. 3df). The formation of this circulation cell
results from the effect of the inversion layer in decou-
pling the wind field above and below it, as the temperature
848 JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY
FIG. 4. As in Fig. 2, but for resolved TKE.
inversion restricts both the growth of the CBL and
subsidence from the atmosphere aloft. A similar decou-
pling effect was observed over the urban area of Milan,
Italy (see Fig. 2 of Argentini et al. 1999).
Figure 2 also shows the development of a CBL at the
floor of all of the valleys, exhibiting a structure of con-
vective circulations composed by updrafts (thermals)
and downdrafts. This structure agrees well with the well-
known structure of the CBL arising when turbulence
generated by buoyancy due to upward heat flux from the
surface dominates relative to turbulence generated by
mean shear (Schmidt and Schumann 1989). Since the
CBL is capped by the inversion layer, its growth is di-
rectly linked to the BTI. In the rural valley (Fig. 2, left)
thermals never exceed a vertical extent of 500 m, while
exhibiting maximum vertical wind speeds not greater
than 0.4 m s21. In contrast, thermals in the 40% urban-
ized valley (Fig. 2, center) reach a vertical extent be-
tween 700 m (at 1200 LST) and 1500 m (at 1500 LST),
VOLUME 53
and maximum vertical wind speeds of around 1 m s21,
while the temperature inversion persists. In the 80%
urbanized valley (Fig. 2, right), thermals reach maxi-
mum vertical wind speeds around 1 m s21 and a vertical
extent of 700 m before the BTI (at 1200 LST), and the
development of the CBL at the valley floor continually
elevates the bottom of the inversion layer until the
breakup process is completed (at 1500 LST).
The mean field of the resolved TKE in the cross sec-
tion of the valleys is depicted in Fig. 4. This figure con-
firms that the flow field in the valley floor is dominated
by thermal turbulence driving the growth of the CBL,
while in the slopes it is dominated by the slope flow. This
is in agreement with simulations showing that turbu-
lence is better developed above a valley floor than over
the slopes (Serafin and Zardi 2010a), and also confirms
that turbulence is enhanced over the urban areas. The
TKE above the floor of the rural valley peaks at around
0.3 m2 s22, while in the urban valleys such peak value is
APRIL 2014
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more than tripled (;1.0 m2 s22). The weak turbulence in
the rural valley can be explained by considering the in-
terplay of two factors: the low heating of the rural sur-
face that diminishes the available energy to promote
buoyancy and thermal convection, and the persistent
flow divergence at the slopes, which continually removes
the TKE produced on the surface.
Turbulence is more efficiently generated by buoyancy
above the urban areas, so it is better developed over the
urban valleys that we studied than over the rural one.
This is in good agreement with the well-known fact that
cities increase the production of thermal turbulence
compared to their surrounding rural areas, as a result of
the increase in the surface heat flux and changes in sta-
bility accompanying the urban heat island (Oke 1995;
Baklanov 2002). Better development of turbulence can
enhance the BTI because of the effect of the CBL on the
bottom of the inversion layer.
A comparison between Figs. 4h and 4i reveals an ef-
fect of temperature inversion on turbulence within the
valley atmosphere. Turbulence remains substantially
confined within the core of the less urbanized valley,
while in the more urbanized example the TKE gener-
ated at the surface is continually removed by free con-
vection after the BTI.
Figures 24 also show that the urban area fraction
influences whether the diurnal valley circulation is a
confined or an open system, that is, whether the ogous to the saturation effect that was discussed in
circulation in the valley atmosphere is decoupled (con-
fined system) or coupled (open system) to that in the
overlying atmosphere. For instance, Fig. 3 shows that
for low extents of urban land (Fig. 3, center), the valley
circulation is confined to the valley during almost the
entire daytime, while for high extents of urban land
(Fig. 3, right) there is a transition from a confined to an
open system during the afternoon (Figs. 3fl). Decou-
pling is caused by the effect of the inversion layer in
restricting vertical motions (see, e.g., Kalthoff et al.
1998; Zhong et al. 2004). The transition from a confined
to an open system in a valley atmosphere is also ex-
pected to be dependent on some topographic features
(Li et al. 2009); however, as mentioned in the in-
troduction, in this study we did not consider different
topographical settings.
c. Transport of pollutants
To consider the air quality implications, we simulate
the transport of a passive tracer continuously emitted
from the urban area, under the influence of the BTI
(further details are given in section 2b). Figure 5 shows
the mixing ratio of the tracer for different urban area
fractions (40% and 80%). We assumed that the tracer is
emitted only from the urban area, and in these areas the
849
surface flux is given by 17 kg21 h21 km22. At each time
step, a corresponding amount of tracer is added to the
lowest grid box. The resulting mixing ratio x is then
advected by the flow according to Dx/Dt 5 0, where D/Dt
denotes the material derivative. The chosen surface flux
is based on measurements of annual carbon emissions
from an urban area of about 360 km2 in Colombias
Aburr
a river valley (Toro et al. 2001). Note that the
amount of pollutant released to the atmosphere grows
linearly both with time and with the size of the urban
area. Note also that the rural valley is not included in
Fig. 5 because the only source of pollution considered is
the urban area.
Figure 5 confirms that the temperature inversion
restricts the transport of pollutants out of the valley
atmosphere, as previously reported in a number of ex-
perimental and modeling studies (e.g., Anquetin et al.
1999; Savij arvi and Liya 2001; Berge et al. 2002; Reuten
et al. 2005). While a temperature inversion persists, the
mixing ratio of pollutants in the valley atmosphere
reaches higher values than those after the BTI. For in-
stance, in the 80% urbanized valley, the mixing ratio
reaches higher values during the morning (Figs. 5b,d)
than those in the afternoon when the inversion layer has
already been destroyed (Fig. 5f), and therefore the
pollutant is distributed over a larger volume than that of
the stable core (below the inversion top). This is anal-
section 3a when considering that the heat released from
the surface tends to be distributed in the entire atmo-
spheric column after the BTI. Note that in the 40% ur-
banized valley a temperature inversion persists throughout
the daytime so the pollutant remains substantially trapped
within the valley atmosphere (Fig. 5, left). This is consis-
tent with the aforementioned difference between a con-
fined and an open circulation in the valley, depending on
the presence of the inversion layer (section 3b).
The maximum mixing ratios are found in the slopes
of the 80% urbanized valley during the morning, before
the BTI (Fig. 5b). The occurrence of such extreme
values over the slopes can be related to three factors.
First, as opposed to the less urbanized valley (Fig. 5, left)
in the more urbanized one (Fig. 5, right), the sidewalls
are mostly covered by urban land that releases pollut-
ants to the atmosphere. Second, upslope winds advect
polluted air from the valley floor to the sidewalls,
and the presence of the inversion layer restricting the
transport of mass out of the valley produces an accu-
mulation of this polluted air over the slopes. Third, the
atmospheric column below the inversion layer is shorter
along the sidewalls than on the valley floor, so over the
slopes the pollutant is mixed with relatively less air.
Numerical simulations by Lehner and Gohm (2010; see
850 JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY VOLUME 53

FIG. 5. Passive tracer mixing ratio (mg kg21) in the (left) 40% urbanized and (right) 80% urbanized valleys (see text for
details). Isentropes are shown every 1 K. The thick (thin) outline of the orography marks the urban (rural) area.

their Fig. 3) show a similar process of accumulation of
polluted air over the slope of a valley as a consequence
of the upslope flow interacting with an inversion layer.
Finally, a comparison between Figs. 5c and 5d shows
an effect of the slope wind patterns on the transport of
the passive tracer. In the 40% urbanized valley a large
amount of the pollutant is trapped near the ruralurban
fringe (Fig. 5c), in the region where the downslope winds
associated with a closed circulation below the inversion
layer appear (recall Fig. 3e). This closed circulation can
trap air pollutants within a relatively small volume
(darker areas in Fig. 5c). This may be an example of a
smog trap (i.e., a situation in which air pollutants tend
to accumulate), which is likely to occur in a valley city as
a result of the interplay between the slope flow, a tem-
perature inversion, and an urban heat island, according
to Savij
arvi and Liya (2001). However, here it is worth
noting that the same mechanisms causing the smog trap
do not appear in our simulations when the sidewalls are
highly urbanized. In the 80% urbanized valley (Fig. 5d),
most of the tracer is removed from the valley floor and
distributed along the slopes by the prevailing upslope
APRIL 2014
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FIG. 6. Heights of the bottom (dotted line) and top (solid line) of the inversion layer in the center of the valley for different urban area
fractions (ranging from 0% to 100%).
winds (recall Fig. 3f), even before the complete de-
struction of the inversion layer.
4. Discussion
To better understand the likely effects of urbanization
on the BTI in a valley and their implications on air
quality, in this section we conceptually integrate the
results presented above by considering changes in the BTI
pattern as a result of changes in the urban area fraction
(section 4a), and we discuss the possible air quality impli-
cations of such alterations (section 4b).
Before continuing, it is important to note two things.
First, our simulations do not include different topog-
raphical settings, although the influence of the topog-
raphy of the terrain on the BTI has been well recognized
(see references in the introduction section). Second, our
model runs use one uniform value of roughness length
for the entire model domain. Obviously, in a more re-
alistic model setup one would expect the roughness
length to increase as one passes from the rural to the
urban part of the domain. Correspondingly, we did some
additional model runs where we accounted for increased
surface friction over the urban area (no figure shown). It
turned out that the sensitivity of our results (such as
those shown in Figs. 2 and 3) to the treatment of the drag
coefficient is very small. This is consistent with a recent
scaling analysis by J. Schmidli and R. Rotunno (2013,
personal communication) indicating that surface friction
plays a secondary role in thermally driven valley wind
systems.
a. Breakup patterns
The effects of urbanization on the BTI in a valley may
be summarized and understood within the framework of

N ET AL.
851
the BTI patterns proposed by Whiteman (1982) and
Whiteman and McKee (1982). They distinguish three
different patterns depending on the relative magnitude
of two processes whose interplay causes the breakup: (i)
the rise of the bottom of the inversion layer resulting
from the growth of the CBL and (ii) the descent of the
top of the inversion layer caused by the removal of air
from the bottom of the valley by the upslope winds, and
the air subsidence from the upper atmosphere. In pat-
tern 1, the BTI is dominated by the rise of the bottom of
the inversion layer, while in pattern 2 the BTI is mainly
caused by the descent of the top of the inversion layer. In
pattern 3, the BTI is caused by the combined effect of
both the ascent of the bottom of the inversion layer and
the descent of its top.
We find that the BTI pattern is sensitive to the per-
centage of urban land. Figure 6 shows the temporal
evolution of the heights of the bottom and top of the
inversion layer obtained from the potential temperature
profiles in the center of the valley showed in Fig. 1. In all
cases the growth of the CBL continuously reduces the
depth of the inversion layer, but it is not always com-
pletely destroyed. For low percentages of urban land
(#40%; Figs. 6ac) the height of the top of the inversion
layer does not substantially change, and the reduction of
the inversion layer is dominated by the growth of the
CBL, so this can be described as pattern 1. In contrast,
for high percentages of urban land ($60%; Figs. 6df),
the breakup follows pattern 3, meaning that the inver-
sion layer is reduced not only by the rise of its bottom,
but also by the descent of its top.
BTI pattern 2 was not found in any of the studied
cases; that is, the descent of the top of the inversion layer
does not dominate the BTI in any case. This may be
explained by two factors. First, the presence of the urban
852 JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY VOLUME 53

FIG. 7. Idealized sketch of the evolution in time of the BTI process and the mean cross-valley circulation depicting the inversion layer (dashed
lines), the main wind flows (black arrows), and the resolved TKE field (shading), for the (left) rural, (center) 40% urbanized, and (right) 80%
urbanized valleys. Isentropes (solid lines) are shown every 1 K. The thick (thin) outline of the orography marks the urban (rural) area.

area in all valleys but the rural one increases the heating
of the valley floor, thus enhancing the growth of a CBL,
which is a process that does not substantially occur in
pattern 2. Second, the occurrence of pattern 2 implies
not only that the development of a CBL over the valley
floor is weak, but also that the upslope winds are strong
enough to substantially remove air from the base of the
inversion. In our simulations, the upslope winds are not
that strong in the rural valley due to the low heating of
the surface, and the development of the CBL is not that
weak in the urban valleys because of the high heating of
the urban area.
The differences between the breakup pattern for low
and high percentages of urban land can be explained by
changes in the dynamics of the wind fields associated
with the urban area fraction. To clarify and discuss
such differences, we introduce Fig. 7, which shows a sche-
matic representation of the BTI for different percentages
of urban land, based on the results presented in section 3
and on our understanding of the BTI process. This
scheme includes a sketch of the inversion layer (dashed
lines), the isentropes (solid lines), the main wind flows
(black arrows), and the resolved TKE (shading). Figures
2 and 3 do not always show the updraft region over
the mountaintops as sketched in Fig. 7, simply because
sometimes the associated thermals lie outside the plot-
ted domain. Similarly, the convergence zone above the
mountaintops is not completely shown in Fig. 3 but is
present in our results and sketched in Fig. 7. It is worth
noting that the dashed lines bounding the inversion
layer have been sketched so as not to exactly match the
isentropes, but only with the purpose of improving the
visualization.
In the rural valley the height of the top of the inversion
layer remains approximately constant at ;800 m (above
the valley floor), while that of the bottom rises from
APRIL 2014
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FIG. 8. Consecutive longitudinal mean fields of the (left) cross-valley w and (center) u wind speed components, and (right) the passive
tracer mixing ratio (mg kg21) in the 20% urbanized valley. Isentropes are shown every 1 K. The thick (thin) outline of the orography marks
the urban (rural) area.

;200 m (at 0900 LST) to ;450 m (at 1800 LST), as a
result of the buoyant production of turbulence at the
surface and the consequent development of a CBL.
Pattern 1 implies that the removal of air from the valley
floor, as well as the subsidence above the inversion layer,
are weak. The airmass transport out of the rural valley
atmosphere is weak because the low heating of the
surface produces weak upslope flows, and the persistent
inversion layer restricts vertical motions. The effect of
the inversion layer in decoupling the circulation above
and below it is evident. The lines (isentropes) limiting
the inversion layer in the cross section of the valley are
approximately horizontal, as proposed in the conceptual
model of Whiteman (1982) and Whiteman and McKee
(1982). At the end of the simulation, an inversion layer is
still present and calm winds prevail.
In low urbanized valleys (20% and 40% percentages
of urban land) the BTI also follows pattern 1, but the
mechanisms driving this pattern differ from those in the
rural valley. Figure 8 summarizes the results obtained
for the 20% urban area fraction, which were not shown
previously. In both valleys, the interplay between the
urban heat island and the presence of the inversion layer
produces downslope winds, thus restricting the removal
of air from the valley floor. Recall from section 3 that the
circulation associated with these downslope winds leads
to an accumulation of air pollutants below the inversion
layer (smog trap). Moreover, weak upslope flows along
the upper half of the slopes (Figs. 2e,h and 3e,h; Figs. 8a,
b,d,e) are linked to weak air subsidence from above the
inversion layer, since the ascending motions related to
the former are compensated by the descending motions
related to the latter. Similarly to the case in the rural
valley, in the low urbanized valleys a temperature in-
version remains throughout the daytime. The presence
of a shallow inversion layer between 1500 and 1800 LST
in the 20% and 40% urbanized valleys is evidenced in
Figs. 5e,g and 8f,i, where the tracer remains capped by
such a layer.
In contrast to the rural valley, in low urbanized valleys
turbulence is more efficiently produced over the urban
areas, and the associated growth of the CBL substantially
854 JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY
reduces the depth of the inversion layer. The surface
heterogeneity in land cover (urban versus rural land)
may lead to nonuniform elevation of the bottom of the
inversion layer caused by the CBL, so that the isentropes
that limit the inversion layer may differ from horizontal
ones, as suggested in Fig. 7h. More significant variations
of these isentropes from horizontal ones may arise when
considering a southnorth-oriented valley where the
symmetry of the surface heating is lost, as a result of
effects such as those of topographic shading. We are
currently working on including topographic shading in
our analyses and plan to report on it in a subsequent
study.
In highly urbanized valleys ($60% percentages of
urban land) the BTI follows pattern 3, which implies that
both the growth of the CBL and the removal of air from
the valley floor exert significant effects on the breakup.
Consequently, the top of the inversion layer descends
while the bottom ascends. As a result of the high urban
area fraction, most of the valley surface, including
a significant part of the sidewalls, is highly heated, thus
giving rise to an efficient buoyant production of turbu-
lence on the valley floor, and inducing stronger upslope
winds as compared to those in low urbanized valleys.
Hence, a CBL develops above the valley surface, while
air is continually removed from the valley floor by the
upslope winds, in turn enhancing air subsidence from
the upper atmosphere. The combined action of these
processes leads to the complete destruction of the in-
version layer between 1200 and 1500 LST. After that,
most of the pollutant is transported out of the valley
atmosphere and may be diluted at larger scale. Further
implications on air quality are considered in the fol-
lowing section.
Our results regarding the dependence of the BTI
pattern on the percentage of urban land are in reason-
able agreement with the study by Whiteman et al. (2004)
of valleys exhibiting different BTI patterns as a conse-
quence of differences in factors affecting the sensible
heat flux from the surface. These authors compared the
BTI pattern in two valleys, one with moist conditions
and the other with dry conditions, and they found that
the breakup in the former follows pattern 2 while in the
latter it follows pattern 3. They attributed this difference
in the BTI pattern to the lower or higher heating of the
surface in the moist or dry valley, respectively.
b. Air quality implications
The influence of urbanization on the air quality of an
urban valley may exhibit contrasting effects when con-
sidering a temperature inversion. This influence does
not appear to be as straightforward as it seems, meaning
that keeping all properties of the urban land constant,
VOLUME 53
the more urban land, the worse the air quality, even
when considering that the amount of pollutants emitted
grows with the size of the urban area. This is because of
the strong effects that a temperature inversion can exert
on the air quality of an urban valley, particularly through
effects on the exchange of air between the atmosphere
above and below the inversion layer. At this point it is
important to remember that we have defined urbaniza-
tion as the expansion of a homogeneous urban area with
respect to both heating and emissions. Therefore, the
situation described here could become even more com-
plex if the intraurban variations of emissions were con-
sidered, but we did not address this issue in the present
study.
A possibly counterintuitive effect of urbanization on
the air quality of a valley city is apparent when com-
paring both columns in Fig. 5. Although peak mixing
ratios occur for the higher percentages of urban land
during the temperature inversion (Fig. 5d), higher urban
area fractions do not necessarily imply higher mixing
ratios during the whole day (cf. Figs. 5g and 5h), al-
though the expansion of the urban area implies an in-
crease in the emission of pollutants. This can be explained
by the effects of the temperature inversion on the venti-
lation of the valley, which in turn is related to the urban
area fraction. Under the assumption of homogeneity of
the urban area, a temperature inversion may persist
during the whole day in a less urbanized valley, so that
air pollutants may remain trapped for longer periods of
time than in a more urbanized valley, owing to the better
ventilation of the latter after the destruction of the in-
version layer. It would be interesting to examine this
idea with empirical evidence from historical data of air
quality covering different percentages of urban land in
a mountain valley. We could not find such data, so we
leave this as an open question.
Taha et al. (2010) performed a model study in three
U.S. cities and found that UHI mitigation measures as-
sociated with lowering surface temperatures can lead to
reductions in air pollution. Our findings are in striking
contrast to this study, since, in our simulations, a weaker
urban heat island associated with lower percentages of
urban land or lower heating of the surface does not
necessarily result in lower air pollution throughout the
daytime. In the 40% urbanized valley we found an urban
heat island effect concurrent with a temperature in-
version and low air quality, while the absence of a tem-
perature inversion after the BTI in the 80% urbanized
valley is concurrent with better air quality (recall Fig. 5).
This is due to the effects of the temperature inversion in
restricting the valley ventilation and the consequent
trapping of air pollutants, which are not considered in the
simulations by Taha et al. (2010). The authors acknowledge
APRIL 2014
N ET AL.
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that the extent to which urban areas can effectively
improve local air quality through UHI mitigation de-
pends on numerous factors, among which one could
consider a temperature inversion. Furthermore, we study
the transport of a passive tracer, without taking into ac-
count any chemical reaction or the possible effects of
pollution on radiation (see e.g., Fan and Sailor 2005).
However, we still consider that our findings with respect
to the interplay between the transport of pollutants re-
leased to the atmosphere from a valley city, and the
presence and eventual destruction of an inversion layer
are plausible, and that they are in reasonable agreement
with previous studies about the impacts of the temper-
ature inversion on air quality over urban and/or complex
terrain, as discussed above.
In sections 3 and 4a we described a circulation below
the inversion layer that can lead to a smog trap situation
associated with the appearance of downslope winds. We
showed that such a downslope flow does not occur in our
simulations when the sidewalls are highly urbanized,
that is, for high percentages of urban land ($60%).
However, the interplay between the upslope flows, the
temperature inversion, and the emissions from urban
areas over highly urbanized valleys may lead to an ac-
cumulation of air pollutants over the sidewalls and be-
low the inversion layer, which might be considered as
another type of smog trap. While a temperature inver-
sion remains, prevailing upslope flows tend to accumu-
late air pollutants over the slopes. This is why peak mixing
ratios are found over the slopes in the highly urbanized
valleys and before the complete destruction of the in-
version layer (recall Fig. 5). This may be relevant to
understanding the features of the spatial variability of
air quality over highly urbanized valleys along the di-
urnal cycle.
An important aspect of our model experiment is that
as the urban land expands beyond the valley floor, the
sloping sidewalls are increasingly heated. Heating the
sidewalls will generally enhance the BTI and the venti-
lation of the valley through strengthening of the upslope
winds. A comparison between the valleys with 40% and
20% urban area fractions (left panels of Fig. 5 and
right panels of Fig. 8) shows that the air quality is worse
in the former valley throughout the daytime. This re-
sult, along with our previous observation that higher
urban area fractions do not imply worse air quality
during the whole day (recall the comparison between
the 40% and 80% urbanized valleys, based on Fig. 5),
suggest that the extent to which urbanization adversely
affects air quality depends strongly on the possible ex-
pansion of the urban area beyond the valley floor toward
the sidewalls. We think that this problem deserves fur-
ther research.
855
We want to stress that in this paper we are not sug-
gesting that urbanization is good for air quality, since
land-use/-cover change (e.g., urbanization) has poten-
tially detrimental, or at least uncertain, environmental
effects at multiple spatial and temporal scales (Foley
et al. 2005). Our concern is to investigate the local effects
of urbanization at the valley scale and, particularly,
those related to the temperature inversion and its in-
fluence on the transport of pollutants out of an urban
valley. Further research on this topic is needed to pro-
vide better information for decision-making processes
related to urban planning, which is of particular impor-
tance in several medium-sized and megacities in Latin
America (Romero et al. 1999), many of which are located
in the mountain terrain of the Andes (e.g., Medell
n in the
Aburr
a river valley in Colombia).
5. Summary and conclusions
We have shown through idealized simulations that in
an urban valley subject to temperature inversions, land-
use/-cover changes resulting from urbanization, which
include changes in the size of the UHI, can have an
important influence on air quality through effects on the
BTI. Despite the completely idealized framework
adopted, the present study provides evidence about
a series of physical processes that are likely to occur in
nature and agrees well with previous studies. In sum-
mary, the main effects of urbanization on the BTI and
the accompanying air quality implications are related to
(i) changes in the breakup time, (ii) alterations of the
thermal cross-valley winds and turbulence dynamics,
(iii) modifications of the breakup pattern, and (iv) im-
pacts on the ventilation of the urban valley.
The percentage of urban land affects the breakup
time, that is, the time that it takes for the inversion layer
to be completely destroyed. We find that the larger the
urban area fraction, the faster the BTI. However, there
are no noticeable differences between the breakup times
for high-percentage urban land cases ($80% in our
simulations), thus suggesting that there is an upper limit
above which the BTI is not further accelerated by in-
creasing the urban area fraction. This seems to be at-
tributable to the location of the ruralurban fringe
relative to the altitude of the top of the inversion layer,
since it determines whether or not the atmosphere be-
low the inversion layer is all urban and hence subject to
a similar heating. This conclusion is only valid under
conditions where the vertical transport of heat above the
inversion is substantially unrestricted.
Several changes in the thermal cross-valley wind sys-
tem, associated with changes in the dynamics of the
temperature inversion, can occur depending on the
856 JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY
percentage of urban land. We found that (i) changes in
the urban area fraction may result in a confined or open
diurnal cross-valley circulation, that is, cross-valley cir-
culation cells decoupled (confined system) or coupled
(open system) to the overlying atmosphere, due to
a capping effect of the inversion layer; (ii) lower per-
centages of urban land (#40% in our simulations) result
in reversed cross-valley circulations producing down-
slope winds, as a consequence of the interplay between
the UHI in the core of the valley and the presence of the
inversion layer restricting vertical motions; (iii) upslope
winds and thermal convective plumes rising off the top
of the valley sidewalls may be intensified as the urban area
fraction grows, thus strengthening the removal of air from
below the inversion layer; and (iv) turbulence is more ef-
ficiently produced by buoyancy over the urban areas and,
therefore, the expansion of urban land enlarges the area
above which the CBL is substantially developed.
The BTI pattern in an urban valley is sensitive to the
percentage of urban land. Under null (rural valley) or
low percentages (#40% in our simulations) of urban
land, the reduction of the inversion layer is dominated
by the rise of its bottom owing to the growth of the CBL
(pattern 1), while when the percentage of urban land is
high ($60% in our simulations), the inversion layer is
reduced by both the rise of its bottom and the descent of
its top (pattern 3). Such descent is caused by the removal
of air from the bottom of the valley by the upslope
winds, as well as the air subsidence from the upper at-
mosphere. This process of the descent of the top of the
inversion layer does not dominate the BTI (pattern 2) in
any of the studied cases.
The influence of urbanization on the air quality of an
urban valley may lead to contrasting and possibly
counterintuitive effects when considering a temperature
inversion. It does not seem to be necessarily true that,
keeping all properties of the urban land constant (as-
suming that emissions expand uniformly with urban land
cover), more urban land implies worse air quality, even
when considering that the amount of pollutants emitted
grows with the size of the urban area. The mixing ratio of
pollutants in the valley atmosphere is sensitive to the
percentage of urban land, not only because of changes in
the amount of pollutant emitted, but also because of the
effects that urbanization can exert on the dynamics of
the temperature inversion, and the consequent effects
on the exchange of air between the atmosphere above
and below the inversion layer. In the simulations pre-
sented in this study, peak mixing ratios occur for the
higher percentages of urban land when the temperature
inversion is present, but higher percentages of urban
land do not imply higher mixing ratios throughout the
daytime and everywhere in the valley.
VOLUME 53
As a final remark, it is stressed that we are not sug-
gesting that increasing the urban area fraction of a
mountain valley would lead to better air quality but,
rather, are pointing out that the urbanization processes
of a mountain valley subject to temperature inversions
may lead to nonevident, and possibly counterintuitive,
impacts on air quality at the valley scale. Better under-
standing of these topics is of particular importance for
urban planning in growing cities located in mountain
terrains, such as several Latin American cities in the
Andes. We acknowledge that urbanization has poten-
tially detrimental, or at least uncertain, environmental
effects on multiple spatial and temporal scales, and that
further research into these topics is needed to support
decision-making processes related to urban planning.
Acknowledgments. We thank S. Serafin for insightful
comments during the early development of this study.
We also thank Editor Joseph Charney and the anony-
mous reviewers for their constructive comments. The
computations for this study were performed on the su-
percomputer Blizzard at the German Climate Com-
puting Center (Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum). AMR
thanks the German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD,
for supporting her as a visiting doctoral student in
Germany through Short-Term Scholarship A/10/77699,
and the Colombian Administrative Department of Sci-
ence, Technology and Innovation, COLCIENCIAS, for
funding her doctoral studies through the research project
on de procesos f
sicos en la baja atm

Caracterizaci
osfera
del Valle de Aburr
a (C

odigo 1115-48925515, Contrato
458-09) and grant Francisco Jos
e de Caldas.
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