The "teapot in a city": a paradigm shift in urban climate modeling

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent interdisciplinary advances in mathematics, physics, and computer science that enable a paradigm shift in urban climate modeling, improving understanding and prediction of city-atmosphere interactions.

Contribution

It introduces novel mathematical and computational approaches from graphics and physics that enhance coupled heat transfer simulations in complex urban environments.

Findings

Enhanced simulation accuracy for urban heat transfer.

Potential applications in energy transition and climate adaptation.

Bridging disciplines for innovative urban climate models.

Abstract

Urban areas are a high-stake target of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. To understand, predict and improve the energy performance of cities, the scientific community develops numerical models that describe how they interact with the atmosphere through heat and moisture exchanges at all scales. In this review, we present recent advances that are at the origin of last decade's revolution in computer graphics, and recent breakthroughs in statistical physics that extend well established path-integral formulations to non-linear coupled models. We argue that this rare conjunction of scientific advances in mathematics, physics, computer and engineering sciences opens promising avenues for urban climate modeling and illustrate this with coupled heat transfer simulations in complex urban geometries under complex atmospheric conditions. We highlight the potential of these approaches beyond urban climate modeling, for the necessary appropriation of the issues at the heart of the energy transition by societies.