Introduction :
The TEB ("Town Energy Balance") model (Masson 2000) was developed to calculate the exchange of energy and water between cities and the atmosphere. It was included in the modeling module surface-atmosphere SURFEX itself coupled with atmospheric weather prediction models (AROME, ARPEGE) and research models (MesoNH). TEB was also coupled in ARPS American models (to study the impact on urban thunderstorms over St. Louis, USA, Rozoff et al 2003) and RAMS.
Processes at the neighborhoods scale
Important processes influencing energy exchanges with the atmosphere are taken into account in TEB. TEB is the only model of its kind to consider all processes, including those related to the water cycle:
- 3D geometry of the city
- Shadows, radiative trapping
- Conduction of heat through roofs, roads and walls. This process is specifically addressed to each surface, to take account of different materials.
- Interception of rainfall, evaporation and runoff. The snowpack on roofs and roads is also modeled (and validated on the city of Montreal).
- Turbulent exchange and microclimate in the street
Processes at the building's scale
The above processes are most important to simulate the exchange of energy and water to the atmosphere (and thus strongly influencing the local weather). They were all included in the first version of TEB. New processes are being developed, particularly for impact studies at fine scale:
- Shadows on and the influence of vegetation and gardens urban forms
- Building's energy Module and windows
- Parameterization of heating and air conditioning
- Index of human comfort (outside or inside)
concepts of the TEB model
The first advantage of TEB is to consider a large number of physical processes, while enjoying a concept of efficient parameterization for fast numerical simulation on large areas. For example:
- Each individual building is not reproduced with the exact geometry (shape, the exact slope of the roof, its layout, etc ...). TEB simply keeps the main geometric characteristic interacting on energy and radiative exchange: a long street with two identical buildings facing each other, also known as the "street canyon".
- Similarly, the calculation for the energy balance, it is not necessary to simulate a large number of blocks with different orientations. Only a calculation is performed by azimuthal averaging of solar gain and wind. However, for impact studies (eg for pedestrian comfort), a version of the model where the direction of the street is set studies is used.
- Movements and characteristics of the air in the street canyon are not simulated with a code of fluid mechanics (for calculations within obstacles with resolutions of 1m or better). We use an original scheme vertical turbulence at several levels which correctly reproduces the average characteristics of the air (wind, temperature, humidity), but erasing unnecessary detail.
Version of TEB with description of the air on several levels (Hamdi and Masson 2008) validated the BUBBLE experiment Basel (Rotach 2005)
Validation of TEB
The second advantage of TEB is simply that this model has been validated on a large number of experimental sites in the world, covering both different climates and especially many cities of varied structure.
Modelling the urban climate
TEB coupled atmospheric model MesoNH faithfully reproduces the induced local meteorology by the city. Just two examples:
- Urban Heat Island over Paris
Our first heat island with TEB (Lemonsu et al 2002) study: in Paris in the summer, the urban heat island is about 2 ° C during the day and can reach more than 8 ° C at night. This is very well reproduced by the model.
- Meteorology on complex on coastal city: Marseilles
In Marseilles, the complex shape of the coast and the presence of three massive steep hills strongly influences the flow of air. The penetration of the sea breeze can be seen for example by a southerly wind on the south side of the city, and a Northwest wind on the northern suburbs. This leads to very different temperature air in the metropolitan area: the air is warmer in the South East on a sparse neighborhood, while it is cooler near the old port in the ancient city center dense. TEB and MesoNH able to numerically simulate all this.
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see README.txt file for all information.
Scientific references for TEB
Pigeon G., K. Zibouche, B. Bueno, J. Le Bras, V. Masson, 2014 : Evaluation of building energy simulations with the TEB model against EnergyPlus for a set of representative buildings in Paris. Energy and Buildings, 76, 1–14, doi : 10.1016/j.enbuild.2013.10.038
De Munck C. A. Lemonsu, R. Bouzouidja, V. Masson, R. Claverie, 2013 : "The GREENROOF module (v7.3) for modelling green roof hydrological and energetic performances within TEB", Geoscientific Model Development, 6, 1941-1960, doi:10.5194/gmd-6-1941-2013
Lemonsu A., V. Masson, L. Shashua-Bar, E. Erell, and D. Pearlmutter, 2012 : Inclusion of vegetation in the Town Energy Balance model for modeling urban green areas, Geoscientific Model Development, 5, 1377-1393.
Hamdi, R. and V. Masson, 2008 : Inclusion of a drag approach in the town energy balance (TEB) scheme : offline 1-d validation in a street canyon. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 47, 2627-2644.
Pigeon, G., M. A. Mosciki, J. A. Voogt, and V. Masson, 2008 : Simulation of fall and winter energy balance over a dense urban area using the TEB scheme. Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, 102(3-4), 159-171.
Lemonsu, A., C. S. B. Grimmond, and V. Masson, 2004 : Modelling the surface Energy Balance of an old Mediterranean city core. J. Appl. Meteorol., 43, 312-327.
Masson V., 2000 : A Physically-based scheme for the Urban Energy Budget in atmospheric models. Boundary-Layer Meteorol., 94, 357-397.