Evaluating the impact of urban morphology configurations on the accuracy of urban canopy model temperature simulations with MODIS

The accuracy of simulations of the urban canopy can be degraded by inaccurate or oversimplified representations of the urban-built environment within models. Using a 10 year (2003–2012) series of offline 1 km simulations over Greater Houston with the High-Resolution Land Data Assimilation System (HRLDAS), this study explores the model accuracy gained by progressively increasing the complexity of the urban morphology representation in an urban canopy model.

The fidelity of the simulations is primarily assessed by a spatiotemporally consistent comparison of a newly developed HRLDAS radiative temperature variable with remotely sensed estimates of land surface temperature from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. The most accurate urban simulations of radiative temperature are yielded from experiments that (1) explicitly specify the urban fraction in each pixel and (2) include irrigation.