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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9034</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-67-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>WRF–City–LES Modelling of the Urban Thermal Environment in Sofia</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Karube</surname>
<given-names>Ryota</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1142-3768</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Vitanova</surname>
<given-names>Lidia Lazarova</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1789-3901</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Shirinyan</surname>
<given-names>Evgeny</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Sato</surname>
<given-names>Takuto</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0009-2956-8445</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Petrova-Antonova</surname>
<given-names>Dessislava</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9920-8877</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Kusaka</surname>
<given-names>Hiroyuki</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0326-7179</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>GATE Institute, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Sofia, Bulgaria</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Graduate School of Science and Technology, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Center for Computational Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>29</day>
<month>09</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>L-4/W3-2026</volume>
<fpage>67</fpage>
<lpage>74</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Ryota Karube et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/L-4-W3-2026/67/2026/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-67-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/L-4-W3-2026/67/2026/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-67-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/L-4-W3-2026/67/2026/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-67-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/L-4-W3-2026/67/2026/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-67-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Urban areas are increasingly exposed to thermal stress owing to the combined effects of global warming and the Urban Heat Island (UHI). High-resolution numerical modelling is therefore needed to assess local thermal environments and support heat-mitigation planning. This study applies a high-resolution WRF&amp;ndash;City-LES downscaling approach to simulate the urban thermal environment of Sofia, Bulgaria. The mesoscale Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model provides regional- to urban-scale meteorological forcing, whereas the microscale City-LES model resolves city-block-scale thermal and wind environments in the Lozenets district by explicitly representing buildings, trees, land-surface characteristics, and building-related anthropogenic heat (AH). Compared with the mesoscale WRF simulation, City-LES more accurately represents the near-surface air temperature at the observation sites, reducing the mean absolute error (MAE) from 1.4 &amp;deg;C to 0.3 &amp;deg;C and the root mean square error (RMSE) from 1.4 &amp;deg;C to 0.3 &amp;deg;C. The high-resolution micro-simulation also captures fine-scale spatial variability in near-surface air temperature and outdoor thermal comfort that WRF did not resolve. The spatial distributions of Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT) and Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) reveal city-block-scale differences related to buildings, tree canopies, and radiative conditions. The AH sensitivity experiment showed that building-related AH had a limited effect on domain-averaged near-surface air temperature under the present implementation. These results demonstrate that the WRF&amp;ndash;City-LES downscaling approach provides a useful basis for urban climate assessment and future urban digital twin applications, including scenario-based evaluation of heat-mitigation strategies.</p>
</abstract>
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