The 1-year（2009-2010） measurements are analyzed of the urban surface energy balance（SEB） obtained from the sensors located at three vertical layers of a 325-m tower in downtown Beijing.Results show that：（1） The measurements from the 325-m tower represent the SEB characteristics of the cities located in semi-humid warm-temperate continental monsoon climate zone.In a typical hot and rainy summer,cold and dry winter,the measured Bowen ratio is minimum in summer and maximum in winter.The Bowen ratio measured at 140 m for spring,summer,autumn,and winter are 2.86,0.82,1.17,and 4.16 respectively.（2） At the height of 140-m（in the constant flux layer）,the noontime albedo is ~0.10 for summer,~0.12 for spring and autumn,and ~0.14 for winter.The ratios of daytime sensible heat flux,latent heat flux,and storage heat flux to net radiation are 0.25,0.16,and 0.59 for clear-sky days,and 0.33,0.19,and 0.48 for cloudy days respectively.（3） Under clear-sky days,the nighttime sensible heat flux is almost zero,but the latent heat flux is greater than zero.For cloudy days,the nighttime sensible heat flux is slightly greater than the latent heat flux in winter.The nighttime upward heat flux is presumably due to the anthropogenic release（mainly latent heat for summer,while latent and sensible heat for winter）.
An urban boundary layer model （UBLM） is improved by incorporating the effect of buildings with a sectional drag coefficient and a height-distributed canopy drag length scale. The improved UBLM is applied to simulate the wind fields over three typical urban blocks over the Beijing area with different height-towidth ratios. For comparisons, the wind fields over the same blocks are simulated by an urban sub-domain scale model resolving the buildings explicitly. The wind fields simulated from the two different methods are in good agreement. Then, two-dimensional building morphological characteristics and urban canopy parameters for Beijing are derived from detailed building height data. Finally, experiements are conducted to investigate the effect of buildings on the wind field in Beijing using the improved UBLM.
