Impacts of projected urban growth on simulated near-surface temperature in Mexico City Metropolitan Area: Implications for urban vulnerability

Abstract:

The Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) is one of the biggest and most important mega-cities in the world. The synergy between population growth and land use change could impact MCMA’s urban sustainability and its capacity to provide and regulate ecosystem services.

Although there is enough literature about the impact on the local weather due to the historic land use change in urban areas, there is still uncertainty on future changes, especially on the ones linked to outcomes of current public policies that address urban growth. In this study, we used the urban growth model SLEUTH to create an urban scenario in MCMA for the year 2060 based on a hypothetical public policy that allows the expansion of the urban sprawl without any restriction. Through the incorporation of decision making and public policies into urban growth modelling, SLEUTH is a powerful tool to understand the consequences of current decision making. The outputs from SLEUTH were then used as inputs for the weather model WRF. Using WRF we modelled the temperature for the month of July 2011 and July 2060 and compared the average maximum, minimum and median temperatures. The preliminary results of both models suggest that the land use change that could potentially take place in natural protected areas and water bodies in the year 2060, and the consequential increase in temperature, will interfere with MCMA’s urban sustainability. We conclude that since these changes occur across the metropolitan area, future public policies should be an inter-state and inter-institutional effort.