Effect of Urbanization on the Urban Heat Island in Fukuoka-Kitakyushu Metropolitan Area, Japan

In the coastal cities, the use of the sea breeze to mitigate the urban heat island phenomenon has attracted attention. To accumulate data for the urban climate in the Fukuoka-Kitakyushu metropolitan area, the fourth largest metropolitan area in Japan and located in coastal area, numerical simulations with a meso-scale meteorological model, the Weather Research and Forecast model (WRF), and upper air observation with Doppler LIDAR were carried out in the summer of 2015, simultaneously. The results of this study suggested that the urbanization process weakened sea breeze penetration.