Cities change how much it rains and where storms hit

Urban development changes storm patterns and rainfall amounts, two new papers suggest.

The research highlights the need for urban planning and infrastructure design that considers how the landscape will affect the weather.

In two separate papers, teams led by Dev Niyogi, Indiana state climatologist and professor in the agronomy and earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences departments at Purdue University, studied storm patterns over the coastal megacity of Mumbai, India, and the mountainous city of San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina, to determine how urban development affected storms in those regions.

The researchers expected to see that Mumbai’s added heat and buildings significantly disrupted storms. But they expected to see little impact in San Miguel de Tucumán since the terrain around the city is rugged, which likely makes the storms turbulent before they reach the city.

Read the Futurity story by Brian Wallheimer from Purdue University - “Cities change how much it rains and where storms hit.”