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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></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/egusphere-2026-5226</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>URAY v1.0: a 3D Monte Carlo model for urban shortwave radiation with explicit buildings and tree canopies</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Mei</surname>
<given-names>Shuo-Jun</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wu</surname>
<given-names>Zhanmin</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>Hu</surname>
<given-names>Jiang-Tao</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chen</surname>
<given-names>Taihan</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chen</surname>
<given-names>Guanwen</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Sun</surname>
<given-names>Ting</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2486-6146</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, and Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai 519082, PR China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>School of Automation, Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University, Guangzhou, PR China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>China Meteorological Administration Xiong’an Atmospheric Boundary Layer Key Laboratory, Xiong’an, PR China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>National University of Singapore, Singapore</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London, London, UK</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>09</day>
<month>09</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>33</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Shuo-Jun Mei 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://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-5226/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-5226/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-5226/egusphere-2026-5226.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-5226/egusphere-2026-5226.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Urban canopy models with trees often represent radiation exchange with idealized street canyon geometry. These models clarify tree shading, canopy interception, and multiple reflection, but they cannot directly resolve the 3D arrangement of buildings and tree crowns across real city districts. URAY addresses this limitation as a city-scale 3D Monte Carlo model for urban shortwave radiative transfer that resolves both buildings and tree crowns. The model extends a building-resolving shortwave solver by adding ellipsoidal tree crowns as transmissive participating media, Woodcock tracking for stochastic canopy interactions, bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) acceleration for complex urban meshes, and GPU parallel photon tracing. The coupled framework resolves explicit building surfaces and tree crowns in one 3D radiative transfer domain and diagnoses both scene albedo and absorbed shortwave radiation for ground, walls, roofs, and tree canopies. Two validation experiments test the canopy transmissivity formulation and the coupled building-tree albedo response in a 3D urban block. URAY reproduces the observed radiative behavior in both cases. We then apply URAY to Guangzhou, a subtropical city with high building density and dense urban tree cover, using resolved 3D building and canopy geometry. This city-scale simulation demonstrates that GPU-parallel URAY can efficiently resolve component-level shortwave absorption across an entire city.</p>
</abstract>
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<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42305076</award-id>
<award-id>W2421048</award-id>
<award-id>U2442212</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs2">
<funding-source>Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province</funding-source>
<award-id>2024A1515010173</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs3">
<funding-source>Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China</funding-source>
<award-id>BH2023009</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
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