CPD Webinar | Heatwaves and climate change in urban microclimates

Royal Meteorological Society webinar, 24th March 2021, 15:00-16:30

Heatwaves and climate change in urban microclimates, Prof. Sue Grimmond, Professor of Urban Meteorology, University of Reading.

This CPD webinar is a part of a Masterclass Series, held in joint partnership with the University of Reading. You can choose to attend just this event. Attendance at all three is not compulsory. This Masterclass Series is a charged-for event, therefore, please ensure you choose the correct registration fee when registering.

Rapid urbanisation (over 6.3 billion urban residents are expected by 2050), combined with more frequent and more extreme climatic conditions, make cities the places where most people are exposed to high impact weather (e.g. typhoons, heat stress, poor air quality events). Cities are centres of creativity and economic progress, but polluted air, flooding and other climate impacts mean urban residents also face significant weather, climate and environment-related challenges. Moreover, increasingly dense, complex and interdependent urban systems make cities particularly vulnerable: a single extreme event can lead to a widespread breakdown of a city’s infrastructure through inter-linked ‘domino’ effects.

The focus of this talk is on heatwaves and how urban areas can exacerbate their impact because of the well-known canopy layer urban heat island effects, and why cities and their residents are particularly vulnerable. Impacts of heatwaves have been very significant if people are not appropriately prepared (e.g. the 2003 European heat wave). The attention will be directed to the important impact of scale and an understanding of the dynamics of urban climate, challenges in predictions and advance warning, and strategies and interventions for heat stress mitigation.

Sue Grimmond

Sue Grimmond is the Met Office Joint Chair and Professor of Urban Meteorology at University of Reading. Previously she held the Chair of Physical Geography and Professor at King’s College London, after being Assistant, Associate and Full Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington USA.

She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and graduate degrees at The University of British Columbia. She is a past President of the International Association of Urban Climate (IAUC) and past Lead Expert for the WMO on Urban and Building Climatology.

Sue is on the editorial board of Urban Climate. She has been awarded a Doctor of Science Honoris Causa (Göteborg University), Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), Isaac Manasseh Meyer Fellowship (NUS), Universitatis Lodziensis Amico Medal (University of Lodz), Helmut E Landsberg Award (AMS),  Luke Howard Award (IAUC); Ernest Frolich Fellowship (CSIRO), Japan Society for Promotion of Science Invitation Fellowship (University of Tokyo), and Eminent Professor Visit Award (Monash University).

Find out more and register here.