Urban areas, home to over half of the world's population, are at the forefront of climate change impacts and adaptation issues. Planning sustainable cities for the future requires not only a clear understanding of how climate change will influence urban areas but also how urban areas influence the local climate. This paper validates the Surface Urban Energy and Water Balance Scheme (SUEWS) model at an urban and a suburban site in Portugal, through five months of simulations, with forcing data from the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). SUEWS is tested against direct flux measurements carried out at the two study areas. The surface energy fluxes are also analysed in terms of the land cover characteristics of each study area, to understand the influence of the surface on the energy balance. At both sites SUEWS is able to simulate the turbulent sensible and latent heat fluxes and reproduces the diurnal cycle of the turbulent fluxes, but shows a consistent overestimation of the sensible heat flux. In terms of the latent heat flux, underestimation at the urban site and overestimation at the suburban site are evident. These results enable the use of WRF-SUEWS for emerging applications, such as, assessment of urban planning measures or assessment of urban climate under climate change scenarios.

世界人口一半以上的城市居住在气候变化影响和适应问题的最前沿。规划未来的可持续城市不仅需要清楚地了解气候变化将如何影响城市地区，还需要城市地区如何影响当地气候。本文通过五个月的模拟，并通过来自天气研究与预测模型（WRF）的数据，对葡萄牙城市和郊区的地表城市能源和水平衡方案（SUEWS）模型进行了验证。针对两个研究区域进行的直接通量测量测试了SUEWS。还根据每个研究区域的土地覆盖特征分析了表面能通量，以了解表面对能量平衡的影响。在这两个地点，SUEWS都能模拟湍流的感热通量和潜热通量，并再现了湍流的日循环，但显示出对感热通量的一致高估。就潜热通量而言，城市站点的低估和郊区站点的高估是显而易见的。这些结果使WRF-SUEWS可以用于新兴应用，例如评估城市规划措施或评估气候变化情景下的城市气候。