Application of refined land-use categories for high resolution mesoscale atmospheric modelling

A comparison of two separate MM5 land-use datasets (i.e., 'US Geological Survey (USGS)' and 'Pollutants in the Atmosphere and their Transport over Hong Kong (PATH)', each with different parameter values and different spatial distributions) was performed to understand the importance of land-surface processes and land-atmosphere interactions in the evolution of mesoscale weather phenomena during a high pollution episode in Hong Kong from 28 December 1999 through 1 January 2000. Also, a series of high resolution mesoscale numerical experiments was performed to investigate the possible roles of various surface characteristics or land-use parameters in this high pollution episode. Specifically, the relative importance of six land-use parameters including the roughness length, thermal inertia, soil moisture availability, albedo, surface heat capacity and surface emissivity are studied. Results from this study suggest that the soil moisture availability is the most important controlling parameter on the flow pattern and on surface fluxes. Sensitivity tests also show that the general flow pattern is insensitive to the other five land-use parameters.