Meet the partner: Météo-France at the Boundary Layer & Turbulence Conference 2025, in Turin

Providing Forcing Data for Urban Simulations

About Météo-France

Météo-France is the official French meteorological administration, also offering services to Andorra and Monaco. It has the powers of the state and can exercise them in relation to meteorology. Météo-France is in charge of observing, studying, forecasting weather and monitoring snowpack. The organisation also issues weather warnings for the Metropole and the overseas territories. Météo-France is also in charge of recording and predicting the climate.

Météo-France has a particularly strong international presence and is the French representative at the World Meteorological Organisation. The organisation is a leading member of EUMETSAT, responsible for the procurement of Meteosat weather satellites. It is a critical national weather service member of the ECMWF and hosts one of two major centres of the IFS numerical weather prediction model, widely used worldwide.

🔗 Learn more: https://meteofrance.com

Météo-France’s Role in UrbanAIR

Météo-France/CNRM will provide the forcing data for urban/street simulations with the AROME model, especially for the turbulent scheme.

Representing UrbanAIR at the Boundary Layer and Turbulence Conference in Turin

In June, the team shared preliminary results from the UrbanAIR project, on testing weather prediction at the street scale to demonstrate how tall buildings shape the weather above our cities. (Boundary Layer and Turbulence Conference, 17-20 June, Turin)

Using the AROME system, simulations were run at 200 m and 100 m resolution for Paris and Antwerp to study how urban structures affect the boundary layer, the lowest part of the atmosphere that is shaped by the surface below. Two approaches were compared: 

• Multi-layer coupling to represent the vertical structure of the urban atmosphere

• Explicit building height data to include actual building heights instead of averages

Why it matters - Focus on the comparison

High-resolution modelling helps improve urban weather forecasts and pollution predictions, by providing information on how the buildings, street layouts, and other urban features can:

• Alter wind patterns

• Trap heat

• Affect air quality

The study examines how explicit building heights influence simulated boundary layer fields, and how these effects may differ between cities and between the two resolutions.

The Météo-France Team

• Eric Bazile – ACCORD/AROME CSC Leader, Senior Research Scientist, Principal Investigator

• Valéry Masson – Senior Research Scientist, Urban Modelling

• Fabrice Voitus – Senior Research Scientist, Dynamical Core

• Léo Rogel – Research Scientist, 3D Turbulence

Follow the Series

Each week, we introduce another partner shaping the UrbanAIR project. Follow UrbanAIR project on LinkedIn and Bluesky, or visit urbanair-project.eu for updates.