Urban weather: Circular cities experience more rain than square or triangular ones

The shape of a city can influence the amount of rainfall it gets, because circular cities are better at mixing air fronts together

By Kate Ravilious

Circular cities have more rain than square cities, and triangular cities have the least rain of all – a finding from a modelling study that could help urban planners tackle the effects of climate change.

Dev Niyogi at the University of Texas at Austin and his colleagues decided to investigate the link between the shape of an urban area and its rainfall after noticing that weather data from roughly circular cities such as Dallas and London often show more rain than triangular cities such as Chicago and Los …