CLIMATE STUDIES IN ISRAEL - A REVIEW

The paper summarizes three decades of urban climate studies in Israel. These studies focused on heat islands in various towns and the effect of urbanization on rainfall excesses over cities and their downwind a reas. While the magnitude of these phenomena and their spatial distrib ution are not at variance with tropical and extra-tropical urban clima te literature, the explanation of the dominant cause of urban rainfall excess in Israel contributes to our understanding of the problem in g eneral. There is some support to the notion that the heat island's the rmodynamics combined with the aerodynamic roughness of the urban struc ture enhances the rainfall rather than air pollution. Another vital co ntribution of this research lies in the spatial techniques which separ ate between the effects of enhancement due to cloud seeding operations and inadvertent urban climate modification.