Increasing urbanization, evolving urban landscapes, and growing populations require an accurate representation of urban areas and urban processes at the microscale, regional, and global scales and their feedback across the scales. This is mostly achieved in micro and regional scale models, but at the global scale, models are set up for big-picture analysis, leaving urban areas poorly represented. This project aims to assess the urban representation in the models included in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). In particular, we aim to understand if megacities, which are mostly situated in coastal areas, are represented as land points and assess if different models (with or without urban representations) show differences over urban grid points.
Supervisor: Negin Nazarian (n.nazarian@unsw.edu.au)
Location: UNSW