Individual contributions of anthropogenic physical processes associated to urban traffic in improving the road surface temperature forecast using TEB model

For years, some work has been undertaken on the traffic heat issue input in the Town Energy Balance (TEB). It has been the subject of many studies related to the summer period and urban heat islands topic. However, during winter conditions, the traffic energy input was marginally integrated into the modeling of the road surface parameters. This deficiency, may explain the differences between forecast and observations for road surface status (RSS) during winter season. Over the past decade, identification and quantification of traffic effects were undertaken. However, they have been studied independently, and non-numerical model integrates the energy contribution of traffic into the RSS. Based on the (TEB) model (v7.2), recent research provided a detailed integration of the traffic thermal contribution in the TEB. This study showed traffic increases the road surface temperature (RST) by 2-3 °C, and its heat inputs improve significantly the RST modeling. This study consists in evaluating the thermal contribution of each traffic process to improve the RST modeling based on field experiments. Secondly, the most significant physical processes of traffic responsible for RST changes have been identified and their contributions discussed. Finally, we analyzed the effects of weather conditions onto the thermal contribution of traffic processes.