UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Melissa Allen-Dumas, research scientist in the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will give a talk, titled “Urban Morphological Feature Inputs in Numerical Weather Predictions,” at 4 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 5, in 112 Walker Building on the University Park campus. The talk, which is part of the spring 2024 Earth and Environmental Systems Institute EarthTalks series "Urban Systems Science," will also be available via Zoom.
Allen-Dumas will discuss how changes in the morphology of even a small, newly added development to a neighborhood affects local and regional meteorology and how that may affect the assessment of neighborhood vulnerability to climate impacts. She incorporates wide-ranging types of data from weather to building size and shape to migration patterns and demographics in her models to evaluate the effects of climate change at the local scale and how communities can best prepare for the impacts.
“To understand and quantify effects of urban form on local microclimate and consequent changes in building energy use, high-resolution urban parameter inputs to numerical simulation models are needed for both historical and projected climate simulations,” Allen-Dumas said. “We have developed a new capability for generating these parameters at sub-kilometer resolution for neighborhoods and cities as they exist today, and we are working on a generative approach for projecting future urbanization within the context of different shared socioeconomic pathway projections.”
Melissa Allen-Dumas holds a doctorate in energy science and engineering and a master’s degree in environmental engineering from the University of Tennessee. Her expertise includes global modeling and analysis of atmospheric species transport, statistical and dynamical downscaling of various climate model output, analysis of direct and indirect effects of climate change on electricity demand, and on other national and civic critical infrastructures.
The talk is part of the EarthTalks spring 2024 series, “Urban Systems Science,” which is exploring complex urban systems including interactions between tightly connected human and natural systems both within city boundaries and between cities and the surrounding rural environment. For more information about the spring 2024 series, visit the EarthTalks website.