Towards
better scientific
communication in urban climate
THEORETICAL AND
APPLIED
CLIMATOLOGY 84 (1-3): 179-190 FEB 2006
Abstract: Better
communication both within the field Of Urban climate and between Urban
climate
and cognate fields is necessary to both bind the subject internally and
to more
effectively move it into interdisciplinary interaction. A brief
statement of the
wide diversity of the field and its Several Modes Of study and
application
leads to the view that it would be beneficial to consider adopting aids
to
increase dialogue. This includes standardization of symbols,
terminology and
indices, classification of phenomena, it protocol to generalize site
description, adoption of principles of experimental design and the use
Of
dimensional analysis and normalization to aid the transferability of
results.
The focus of this paper is how to
facilitate
scientific interaction between participants within the field Of Urban
climate,
including, both those who study its mechanisms and effects and those
who apply
such knowledge to the improvement of human settlements. As a by-product
it may
also assist communication between Urban climatologists and workers in
cognate
fields as well its those we wish to entrain in the fields of policy
development
and environmental management. Section 1 explains the nature of the
Urban
climate field and its practitioners, especially the diversity of
scholarly
disciplines, the range of topics Studied and the motivations for doing
so.
Section 2 describes the sequence of investigative modes associated with
achieving coherent Understanding and intelligent application of Urban
climate.
Section 3 attempts to outline some essential elements which might
promote
discourse between these modes such as the use of a common set of
symbols and
terminology and ways of expressing results so as to standardize
variables and
thereby assist comparison and transferability of results.