Xiaoming Cai, Lee Chapman and John Thornes have been awarded a NERC CASE Studentship for the project “Quantifying the influence of wind advection on urban heat island for an improvement of a climate change adaptation planning tool”. This project builds upon the existing partnership between the University and Birmingham City Council (the CASE partner), and in particular, the successfully completed project BUCCANEER (Birmingham Urban Climate Change Adaptation with Neighbourhood Estimates of Environmental Risk). The BUCCANEER project has won the award for Environmental Sustainability at the prestigious Lord Stafford awards in 2012.

Urban heat island of Birmingham from the BUCCANEER tool

This PhD studentship aims to develop a generic methodology of correcting the urban heat island (UHI) patterns from a local-equilibrium UHI model (e.g. the BUCCANEER model) by incorporating wind advection simulated from a 3D meteorological model. The scientific output of the generic methodology is transferrable to other cities and other models of the similar kind. The output of the project will be delivered to Birmingham City Council for the purpose of risk assessment, climate change adaptation, and strategic planning.