Impact of urbanization on precipitation and temperature over a lake-marsh wetland: A case study in Xiong’an New Area, China

Considering the future rapid economic development and large population growth, Xiong’an New Area (known as a lake-marsh wetland) has been undergoing rapid urbanization especially under the background of the Xiong’an New Area Project, which has caused considerable regional climate changes in local area and has proven to be a research focus for studying various problems/aspects in the process of urbanization in the new era.. Both lake-marsh wetlands and urbanization have a significant impact on the local climate, and they also interact with each other. However, few studies focus on simulating and analyzing the interaction mentioned above. In this paper, we use the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to quantitatively analyze the effects of urbanization on regionals climate in Lake- Marsh Wetland area. To depict the process of urbanization and differences/changes in temperature and precipitation induced by urbanization, five scenarios were set up, including 1980, 2000, 2015, design, and urban scenarios. The results suggest that: (i) Urbanization surrounding the lake-marsh wetland increases local precipitation. The precipitation center is concentrated in the lake area and its surrounding area, and Baiyangdian Lake has a great influence on precipitation. (ii) Urbanization slightly increases the local temperature. The design and urban temperatures increased by 0.063 and 0.104 ℃ compared with the 1980 temperatures. The design scenarios have the highest temperature in the southeast, the lowest temperature in the central lake area, and the overall spatial distribution of temperature decreases from southeast to northwest. (iii) In/during the urbanization process of Xiong’an New Area, the increase of rainstorm precipitation is more significant, which increases the potential risk of urban flood, and indicates a much more urgent practical need for the construction standard of local drainage pipeline network. (iv) The temperature in/near the lake area is lower, which has played a cooling role. The temperature difference between the inside and outside of the lake is about 1 ℃. There are different responses to temperature and precipitation inside and outside the lake area in the same established urbanization process. Precipitation inside the lake area varies greatly under the influence of urbanization, while the temperature increases slightly.