Research Subject:
Urbanization; Climate effect; Adaptation strategy
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Xiuqun YANG
xqyang@nju.edu.cn
Research Content & Progress:
The large-scale urbanization in eastern China, represented by the three mega-city clusters in the Yang-tze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regions, is a driving force and strategy of China’s economic and social development. However, such an urbanization also leads to rapid land cover and land use changes and serious air pollution in eastern China. As a regional highly-intensified human activity, it is an important forcing factor of regional climate. The urbanization can form a unique urban climate and relative high-impact meteorological disasters, damaging the urbanized sustainable economic and social development. On the other hand, the coastal urban zone consisting of a number of mega-city clusters in eastern China with its air pollution possesses spatial scale comparable to that of East Asian monsoon. The climate effects of the coastal urban zone may affect the East Asian summer monsoon changes and the pattern of droughts and floods in China, which has become an international forefront of basic science issues. Therefore, it is a key national need to study and understand climate effect of the large scale urbanization in eastern China and further suggest the national strategy for the scale, layout and function of future urbanization in China.
Objectives of this project are: (1) to identify local-to-regional climate effect of the coastal mega-city clusters, providing theoretical basis for national urban weather and climate predictions, (2) to evaluate possible impact of the large-scale urbanization in eastern China on East Asian monsoon, contributing to understanding the climate change caused by highly-intensified regional human activities, and (3) to assess negative impact of the climate effect due to urbanization, suggesting the strategy for scale, layout and function of future urbanization in China.
