Fig. 9: Examples of urban and vicinity masks for different cities and models.

Buenos Aires (a, b) and Paris (c, d) are shown as depicted in REMO and RegCM (in columns). Cells with red and olive borders represent urban and non-urban (rural) surrounding areas, respectively. Rural cells are selected iteratively through a morphological dilation, ensuring a minimum ratio (in this case, 2) between the number of urban and rural cells. The algorithm excludes large water bodies (land fraction below 70%) and areas with a large difference (>100 m) in model elevation with respect to the urban area elevation range.