The Town Energy Balance (TEB): An urban surface

parametrisation developed at Météo France

Robert Schoetter, Aude Lemonsu, Valéry Masson

CNRM-GAME, Météo France, Toulouse, France
 Outline

 Motivation for the development of the Town Energy Balance (TEB)

 Fundamentals of TEB

 Meteorological forcing data

 Applications for urban climate studies

 The CAPITOUL campaign and TEB tutorial

Motivation for the development of
the Town Energy Balance (TEB)
Surface energy, water and momentum balance depends
on land use type

Figure: De Munck (2013)

 Surface energy balance impacts local climate

Differences between urban and rural climate

– (Nocturnal) air temperature higher in urban area (UHI)
– Relative humidity lower in urban area
– Absolute humidity can be higher in urban area
– Wind speed lower in urban area
– Enhancement/suppression of clouds and precipitation possible

Nocturnal (2 a.m.) air temperature

observed in Toulouse on July 4 2004
during the CAPITOUL campaign
(Masson et al., 2008)
SURFEX: A surface parametrisation for atmospheric
models

Figure: Pigeon (2009)

 What is TEB made for?

Purpose and design of TEB

– Urban surface energy, water, momentum balance for atmospheric models
– Sensible and latent heat flux, momentum and radiation exchange
– The scale of application is an urban district, not single buildings
– Numerical integration must be a lot faster than for atmospheric model

TEB is not designed for

– Simulations at the scale of one single building
– Details of the wind and temperature fields in the street canyons
– Details inside the buildings
Fundamentals of TEB
 TEBs assumptions on urban morphology

 Buildings oriented along street canyons with length >> width

 Homogeneous urban morphology

– Buildings in one district have the same height
– Street canyons in one district have the same width

 Street canyon orientation can be taken into account

 Single layer urban canopy model (one-node walls, ...)

 Radiation modification due to buildings

Figure: Masson (2000)

Only average shortwave and longwave radiation

on roof, road, insolated and shaded wall

Only one value for the surface temperatures

Calculation of temperature, humidity and wind speed
inside the street canyon

Figure: Masson (2000)

Canopy option in more recent code versions

 BEM: A Building Energy Model for TEB

 Why a building energy model for TEB?

– Indoor air temperature influences HVAC energy demand
– HVAC demand can be major part of anthropogenic heat flux
– This can have important implications for urban climate (mainly UHI)

 BEM: Building Energy Model (Bueno et al., 2012)

– One-node building model integrated in TEB
– Same assumptions for morphology than for TEB

The TEB-BEM approach allows for a simulation of the

interactions between urban climate and HVAC energy demand
 Main interactions between urban climate and building
energy demand

 Meteorological conditions in the city influence

– Heating and cooling energy demand
– Ventilation and shading by building occupants
– Use of lighting devices by building occupants

 Building energy demand leads to

– Increase of anthropogenic sensible and/or latent heat
– Amplification of (nocturnal) urban heat island (UHI)

 Feedbacks between UHI and building energy demand

– Negative during heating season
– Positive during cooling season
 Scheme of TEB-BEM (thanks to Julien Le Bras)

First level of
atmospheric model

TEB: Masson (2000)

BEM: Bueno et al. (2012); Pigeon et al. (2014)
Garden: Lemonsu et al. (2012)
Greenroof: De Munck et al. (2013)
 Prognostic and diagnostic variables

 Main prognostic variables

– Roof, wall, road, mass and floor temperature (several layers)
– Town sensible and latent heat flux
– Town net solar and net infra-red radiation
– Indoor air temperature and humidity
– HVAC energy demand

 Main diagnostic variables

– Street canyon air temperature and humidity
– Along canyon horizontal wind speed
– Town effective albedo
– Town average radiative surface temperature
 Evaluation and validation of TEB and BEM

 Evaluation of TEB
– Dry version (Mexico City and Vancouver; Masson et al., 2002)
– Including vegetation (Marseille; Lemonsu et al., 2004)
– Fall and winter (Toulouse; Pigeon et al., 2008)
– Including snow cover (Montreal; Lemonsu et al., 2010)
– Further evaluations by TEB user community

 Comparison between BEM and Energy+ (Pigeon et al., 2014)

– Five representative buildings in Paris
– Heating and cooling demand within ~15%
– Single-node building model seems “sufficiently good”
 Required input data characterising the urban area

 Surface cover fractions (building, road, vegetation, water)

 Urban geometry
– Building height
– Street canyon orientation
– Wall to horizontal area ratio
 Architectural characteristics
– Albedo, emissivity, thickness, thermal conductivity and heat
capacity of roofs, walls, road, floor and mass
– Several layers with different materials can be dealt with
– Window characteristics (U-Value, SHGC)

 Behavioural characteristics
– Heating and cooling design temperature
– Building internal heat release
– Window and shading use
Meteorological forcing data
 General specifications of meteorological forcing data

 Required meteorological forcing data

– Air temperature and specific humidity
– Wind speed and direction
– Air pressure
– Direct and diffuse downwelling solar radiation
– Downwelling infra-red radiation
– Rain and snow fall rate

 Origin of forcing data

– Lowest level of atmospheric model (e.g. Méso-NH)
– Observation based data (e.g. meteorological station)
– The forcing must be consistent with the TEB formulation

 Temporal resolution should be about 1 hour

 Requirements for forcing data

The forcing data for TEB-BEM must represent

the meteorological conditions
above the average building height
in the
urban boundary layer

 The forcing data for urban areas must not be

– Rural station observations at 2 m
– Rural station observations extrapolated to ~30 m
– Urban station observations at 2 m
– Output of atmospheric model at 2 m
 Simple scheme of nocturnal urban and rural boundary
layer

Figure: Le Bras and Masson (2015)

 Use of rural data at 30 m as forcing for TEB leads to

– Neglection of potential UHI at 30 m
– Underestimation of canyon air temperature by TEB
– Town sensible heat flux might be too large
– ….
 The urban weather generator: A methodology for
numerically cheap forcing of TEB with station data

Figure: Le Bras and Masson (2015)

The urban weather generator (Bueno et al., 2013; Le Bras and Masson, 2015)
is based on an energy balance of the urban boundary layer

It allows for urban climate simulations with TEB forced by station observations
 Application of the urban weather generator for Paris

For Paris the urban weather generator

compares well to Méso-NH

Larger biases might occur in the

presence of hills or for cities
close to the shore

Figure: Le Bras and Masson (2015)

Applications for urban climate studies
Impact of air conditioning on the UHI of Paris
Result of De Munck et al. (2013)
Impact of ground-based urban vegetation on canyon
daily minimum air temperature (De Munck, 2013)

Figure: De Munck (2013)

Impact of green roofs on canyon daily maximum air
temperature (De Munck, 2013)

Figure: De Munck (2013)

TVE = Green Roof
 Impact of greening on HVAC demand
Results of De Munck (2013)

Green roofs reduce HVAC demand in all seasons

Street trees increase heating energy demand
For summer all greening strategies reduce cooling energy demand
 The ANR-MApUCE project: generation of quantitative
data on coupled urban climate and energy consumption

Urban morphology Socio-economical, Analysis of

Construction materials Behavioural data legal aspects

GIS-based creation of maps with

TEB-BEM input parameters

Include behaviour Simulations for Recommendations

into TEB-BEM ~80 French cities for urban policies
 The MApUCE project milestones

 Creation of MapUCE database (~80 largest cities in France)

– Urban morphology and architectural data
– Islet type, building age and usage
– Data characterising human behaviour
– Spatial resolution: islets = Unité Spatiale de Référence (USR)
 Selection of urban climate simulation strategy
– SURFEX forced by Méso-NH
– SURFEX forced by urban weather generator
– Which complexity is required for which type of urban area?
 Productive simulations for the ~80 largest cities in France
– Production of maps: urban climate and energy consumption
– Some scenarios (adaptation measures, building regulations)

Building HVAC energy demand prediction might

be possible based on MApUCE achievements
The CAPITOUL campaign and TEB tutorial
 The CAPITOUL campaign

 CAPITOUL (Masson et al., 2008)

– Observations in Toulouse, February 2004 to March 2005
– Urban surface energy balance measured at meteorological mast
– Various other observations (stations, airborne, …)

 Centre of Toulouse
– Homogeneous urban morphology
– ~20 m high red brick buildings
– Vegetation is rare
– Not much industry
 CAPITOUL's anthropogenic heat release estimations

 Meteorological mast observations

– Radiative fluxes
– Sensible and latent heat fluxes
– Anthropogenic heat release as residuum
– Advection and storage introduce noise
– Observed turbulent fluxes biased
– Residuum is biased

 Inventory of anthropogenic heat

– Traffic fuel, electricity, gas,
domestic fuel, coal, wood
– No biases due to meteorological noise
– Spatial and temporal resolution limited
by data availability
Anthropogenic heat release of Toulouse
Results of Pigeon et al. (2007)

Largest difference in spring

Reason: bias of latent heat flux?

Very strong influence of heating

No effects of cooling
Noise!

CAPITOUL ideal for evaluation

of MAPUCE results
Estimation of anthropogenic heat for CAPITOUL using
TEB-BEM

Best results for 'reasonable'

values of behavioural
input parameters

Initialisation problem?
Too high a sensitivity!
August holidays?

Issues with different spatial

representativities of
mast, inventory and model
 Options for download of SURFEX and TEB
The codes are written in Fortran90!

 SURFEX (TEB+ISBA+FLAKE+CMO1D)
– http://www.cnrm.meteo.fr/surfex/
– Essential scientific publications on TEB and ISBA
– SURFEX scientific and technical documentation
– A license agreement needs to be signed with Météo France

 TEB-Opensource
– https://opensource.cnrm-game-meteo.fr/projects/teb/files
– Contains a very simple vegetation model
– Essential information in README.txt
 Specification of TEB-Opensource

 TEB-Opensource is hardcoded for CAPITOUL

– In driver.F90: input parameters for CAPITOUL
– In input folder: CAPITOUL mast meteorological forcing (30 min.)
– Compilation using make
– Execution of compiled program: ./driver.exe
– Output (30 min.) can be found in output folder
– Test your installation by comparing output and output_ref
– Small differences (~10^-4) can be due to platform dependency
 Prepared experiments
- Influence of heating and climatisation
 “std” (theat_target = 292.15 K; tcool_target = 297.15 K)
 “nohvac” (theat_target = 200 K; tcool_target = 400 K)

DJF JJA JJA

Heating has strong influence on town sensible heat flux during winter
Cooling has a strong impact during the night in the summer season

Without cooling: Unrealistic high values for indoor temperature during

summer. This is due to the zero flux ground floor boundary
condition at 25 cm depth
 Prepared experiments
- Changed boundary condition for the deep floor
“nhvfloor” (deep floor temperature hardcoded to 19 °C)

Resolves problem of unrealistic indoor temperature

Problem:
- arbitrary
- violation of energy conservation

Better solution would be to introduce calculations

for the deep soil below the buildings (e.g. 2 m)

What are the opinions of building simulation experts

on how to treat the deep soil below the buildings?
 Prepared experiments
- Impact of the roof and wall isolation
 “roofslate” (roof = 2 cm slate without isolation material)
 “roofiso” (roof = 2 cm slate + 8 cm isolation material)
 “wallnoiso” (walls are 25 cm pure brick)

Roof isolation very important

Wall isolation not so important
Might be artifact of one-node building model
Comments from experts?
Ideas for further sensitivity studies?
 References 1

 Bueno, B., G. Pigeon, L.K. Norford, K. Zibouche and C. Marchadier, 2012: Development and
evaluation of a building energy model integrated in the TEB scheme. Geosci. Model Dev., 5, 433-
448.
 Bueno, B., J. Hidalgo, G. Pigeon, L. Norford and V. Masson, 2013: Calculation of air
temperatures above the urban canopy layer from measurements at a rural operational weather
station. J. Appl. Meteorol. Climatol., 52, 472-483.
 De Munck, C.S., A. Lemonsu, R. Bouzouidja, V. Masson and R. Claverie, 2013: The
GREENROOF module (v7.3) for modelling green roof hydrological and energetic performances
within TEB. Geosci. Model Dev., 6, 1941-1960.
 De Munck, C.S., G. Pigeon, V. Masson, F. Meunier, P. Bousquet, B. Tréméac, M. Merchat, P.
Poeuf and C. Marchadier, 2013: How much can air conditioning increase air temperatures for a
city like Paris, France? International Journal of Climatology, 33, 210-227.
 Le Bras, J. and V. Masson, 2015: A fast and spatialized urban weather generator for long-term
urban studies at the city scale. Front. Earth Sci., 3:27.
 Lemonsu, A., C.S.B. Grimmond and V. Masson, 2004: Modeling the surface energy balance of
the core of an old Mediterranean City: Marseille. J. Appl. Meteorol. Climatol., 43, 312-327.
 Lemonsu, A., S. Belair, J. Mailhot and S. Leroyer, 2010: Evaluation of the Town Energy
Balance Model in cold and snowy conditions during the Montreal Urban Snow Experiment 2005.
J. Appl. Meteorol. Climatol., 49, 346-362.
 Lemonsu, A., V. Masson, L. Shashua-Bar, E. Erell and D. Pearlmutter, 2012: Inclusion of
vegetation in the Town Energy Balance model for modelling urban green areas. Geosci. Model
Dev., 5, 1377-1393.
 References 2

 Masson, V. 2000: A physically-based scheme for the urban energy budget in atmospheric
models. Boundary-Layer Meteorology, 94, 357-397.
 Masson, V., C.S.B. Grimmond and T.R. Oke, 2002: Evaluation of the Town Energy Balance
(TEB) scheme with direct measurements from dry districts in two cities. J. Appl. Meteorol.
Climatol., 41, 1011-1026.
 Masson, V., L. Gomes, G. Pigeon, C. Liousse, V. Pont, J.-P. Lagouarde, J. Voogt, J.
Salmond, T.R. Oke, J. Hidalgo, D. Legain, O. Garrouste, C. Lac, O. Connan, X. Briottet, S.
Lachérade and P. Tulet, 2008: The Canopy and Aerosol Particles Interactions in TOulouse
Urban Layer (CAPITOUL) experiment. Meteorol. Atmos. Phys., 102, 135-157.
 Pigeon, G., D. Legain, P. Durand and V. Masson, 2007: Anthropogenic heat release in an old
European agglomeration (Toulouse, France). Int. J. Climatol., 27, 1969-1981.
 Pigeon, G., M.A. Moscicki, J.A. Voogt and V. Masson, 2008: Simulation of fall and winter
surface energy balance over a dense urban area using the TEB scheme. Meteorol. Atmos. Phys.,
102, 159-171.
 Pigeon, G., K. Zibouche, B. Bueno, J. Le Bras and V. Masson, 2014: Improving the
capabilities of the Town Energy Balance model with up-to-date building energy simulation
algorithms: an application to a set of representative buildings in Paris. Energy and Buildings, 76,
1-14.