Case studies of the winds in the urban area of Hong Kong – Microclimate station observations and high resolution numerical simulations

Abstract

Hong Kong, renowned for its densely packed urban areas, poses unique challenges for understanding the effects of buildings on local meteorological conditions. To address this, the Hong Kong Observatory has started building a network of urban meteorological monitoring stations since 2017 for monitoring, analysing and studying urban microclimate. This paper presents an observational and numerical study focusing on wind measurements obtained from wind sensors installed on two smart lampposts in Tsim Sha Tsui, a major urban area in Hong Kong. Two representative high wind conditions in Hong Kong, Super Typhoon Saola in 2023 and a strong monsoon case characterized by prevailing easterly winds, are considered. With the use of high resolution computational fluid dynamic simulations, major features of actual observations can be reproduced. This suggests that district scale or even street scale weather services could be possible in the future with sufficient computational power.

Keywords

• Microclimate station
• Smart lamppost
• Urban meteorology
• Computational fluid dynamics