Valerie P's Senior Project Blog

Project Title: Professor
BASIS Advisor: Mr. McClernon
Internship Location: ASU-Tempe
Onsite Mentor: Matei Georgescu



Project Abstract

Urban climate models are physics-based tools that map the flow of heat and energy in cities as well as the interactions between urban environments and the atmosphere. These models are key to predicting weather and climate crises, and their results can help cities determine the most effect measures needed to protect their infrastructure. In the past couple of decades, researchers have created increasingly complicated models in hopes of increased accuracy. However, these require more computational energy and development time, so it is important to understand whether those resources are better used elsewhere. Not much research has been done into evaluating whether this increased model complexity has led to increased model accuracy. This project will document my time at the Urban Climate Research Center at Arizona State University, looking to provide some insight into this issue. I will work with my onsite mentor to examine already existing urban land surface models and how those models have compared to each other in terms of performance in the past. My project is primarily based on reading and evaluating past research, looking at potential metrics and intercomparison that may lend itself to evaluating skill in urban climate models.

    My Posts:

  • Week 6

    Good morning, everyone! I hope this week has been treating you well.   I've decided to continue on with the theme of last week and answer a couple more of the questions from the list of suggested blog prompts and ideas.   What advice would you give to BASIS juniors about choosing their projects, based... Read More

  • Week 5

    Good morning! I was feeling inspired by Bhavitha's latest posts, so I decided in this post I'd answer a couple questions from the blog prompts and ideas list that Dr. Wilke gave us.   In what ways did your classwork at BASIS prepare you for the experience of your internship? I think I've only really... Read More

  • Week 4

    Good morning! For this post, I'm going to pivot from discussing what I've been reading about to looking at other research in this field.   Yesterday, I actually sat in on my site advisor's, Dr. Georgescu, research group at ASU. He has a few students working under him, all working on their own individual projects,... Read More

  • Week 3

    Good morning! Kind of actually reversing back on what I discussed in the last two posts, I want to discuss more how urban climate models are constructed and what factors can influence them.   So, when a lot of these researchers are constructing models to look at cities, many of them are based off the surface... Read More

  • Week 2

    Good morning! This post is a sort of a continuation of last week's. This article, Evaluation of 30 urban land surface models in the Urban-PLUMBER project: Phase 1 results , was published about 2 years ago and seeks to do another review on urban land surface models and their evolution in the past decade. The last... Read More

  • Week 1:

    Good morning!   For my first week, I've collected two readings. The first one is called Initial results from Phase 2 of the international urban energy balance model comparison by C. S. B. Grimmond, focusing on the development of urban land surface schemes.   To begin, we need to define a few terms. Land surface... Read More

  • Introduction

    Good afternoon! My name is Valerie Polukhtin, I'm a future Class of 2025 graduate, and I'm just about getting ready to start my senior project.   My interests lie with mathematical modeling (I'm planning to major in applied math) as well as environmental science and sustainability, so I've decided to combine these interests into a... Read More