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Changes in atmospheric composition impact air quality and human health and play key roles in the Earth’s weather and climate systems. For example, aerosol amounts, and physical and chemical properties determine their toxicity, radiative and microphysical impacts. Recent advances in observations and models are significantly enhancing our ability to quantify the distribution and properties of...
Operational Air Quality Forecasting: Progress and Challenges
ECCC's operational air quality program is based on a multi-pollutant forecast and warning program and includes several Air Quality (AQ)-related products. Currently, AQ information is communicated through an Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) that is primarily based on forecasted and/or observed concentrations of O3, NO2 and PM2.5. The ECCC national AQ program is supported by two operational...
The next-generation National Air Quality Forecast Capability (NAQFC) in the U.S. now uses the advanced Finite Volume Cubed-Sphere (FV3) Global Forecast System (GFS) Version 16 to drive the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model version 5.3.1. Development of the NOAA-EPA Atmosphere Chemistry Coupler (NACC) formed the bridge between the GFSv16 driving meteorology and CMAQ model chemical...
An operational air quality forecasting model system has been developed and provides daily forecasts of ozone, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter for the area of Hungary and three big cites of the country (Budapest, Miskolc and Pécs). The core of the model system is the CHIMERE off-line chemical transport model. The AROME numerical weather prediction model provides the gridded...
The use of probabilistic forecasting has been growing in a variety of disciplines because of its potential to emphasize the degree of uncertainty inherent in a prediction. Interpretation of probabilistic forecasts, however, is oftentimes a difficult endeavor and can deter users who may benefit from such forecasts. To encourage broader use of probabilistic forecasts and to show their...
2021 has been a very active year in North America for wildfires, especially in western and central Canada. More than 4 million hectares of forested land in Canada were burned as of September 2021, well above the average for the last 10 years. Over 40,000 people in several regions were evacuated from their homes, also above average, and dozens of residences were destroyed, notably in Lytton...
We employ the regional coupled meteorology-atmospheric chemistry WRF-Chem model to perform air quality forecasts over the Eastern Mediterranean, and inter-compare with the forecast from the EU Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service – CAMS. The model forecast skill is evaluated using measurements the concentrations of atmospheric pollutants from a dense network of 9 ground stations in the...
The impact of air pollution and climate change constitutes a serious and growing public health across Africa. Sustaining economic growth without a large increase in problems associated with air pollution and climate emissions will depend on whether policy makers in the region adopt and implement cost-effective solutions to air pollution and climate change. Furthermore, Africa is considered...
Emissions generated by the transportation sector continue to be one of the main causes of air pollution in Latin American cities. Despite major technological improvements in the automotive industry, motor vehicles continue to rely primarily on fossil fuels. Electromobility is emerging as a potential solution for the transport of the future, but there are still several decades of transition,...
Poor air quality (AQ) is a most pressing international environmental problem. A soon-to-be-operational network of geostationary AQ satellites (GEMS, TEMPO, and Sentinel 5) that will effectively cover the Northern Hemisphere with hourly AQ observations at ~5 km resolution will revolutionize AQ forecasting/data assimilation. I will present preliminary results from two multi-constituent ensemble...
Top-down atmospheric inversion uses spatially distributed observations of atmospheric compositions to provide estimates of surface-atmosphere fluxes. In this study, we constructed a Regional multi-Air Pollutant Assimilation System (RAPASv1.0) based on the Weather Research and Forecasting/Community Multiscale Air Quality Modeling System (WRF/CMAQ) model, the three-dimensional variational...
There are ongoing efforts to develop the operational regional inline air quality model, RRFS-CMAQ (Rapid Refresh Forecast System with CMAQ chemistry) based on the Finite Volume Cubed-Sphere Dynamic Core (FV3), under the NOAA Unified Forecast System. As part of these efforts, the chemical data assimilation (DA) capability is being developed to improve the model results. Here we present the...
A near-real-time (NRT) global aerosol data assimilation (DA) and forecast system has been developed to produce global aerosol analyses and forecasts at NOAA/OAR/GSL. The aerosol DA is performed using the Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration (JEDI) led by the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA). The GSL’s Common Community Physics Package (CCPP) version of Global...
In collaboration with the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA and State University of New York at Albany, NOAA is developing capability to assimilate observations to create the first ever aerosol reanalysis at this institution. Initially, the reanalysis is being developed only for the year 2016. It will benefit scientists involved in aerosol forecasting, as well as the climate,...
This study reports a very high-resolution (400 m grid-spacing) operational air quality forecasting system developed to alert residents of Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) about forthcoming acute air pollution episodes. The system assimilates near real-time aerosol observations from in situ (260 stations) and space-borne platform in the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled...
Atmospheric pollution is an important issue in urban areas, posing a major threat to health and climate. Streets, where populations are exposed, often present high concentrations of nitrogen oxides and fine particles composed by black carbon, organic and inorganic compounds. These pollutants may have important effects on human health, including asthma and cancer. Here, multi-scale simulations...
Associated with increasing worldwide urbanization, and despite efforts made to reduce airborne concentrations of primary pollutants, air quality remains a concern in urban areas. Especially during short-term pollution episodes that can lead to exceedances of air quality standards. Furthermore, exposure to elevated levels of air pollution may result in various adverse health effects.
In...
A data assimilation method combined with machine learning has been developed and applied to adjust anthropogenic emissions and improve forecasting accuracy in Chinese unified atmospheric chemistry environment (CUACE) model. This is an attempt to combine data assimilation and machine learning. Nudging method was used to create the database of nudging gain matrixes, using simulations of CUACE...
Seasonal open biomass burning contributes to significant carbonaceous aerosol loading over South Asia. This study analyzes long-term trends in emissions in two hot spot regions, Myanmar and Punjab, based on data from the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED4s) and Fire INventory (FINN) from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Our analysis reveals that emissions during active...
Verification and diagnostic activities are critical for the success of both numerical weather prediction and weather forecasting efforts at organizations around the world. There are several concerns that should be addressed before starting a model evaluation activity, including understanding the nature of observations that will be used for the evaluation. This information will determine what...
The Atmosphere Monitoring Service of the European Copernicus Programme (CAMS) is an operational service providing analyses, reanalyses and daily forecasts of aerosols, reactive gases and greenhouse gases on a global scale, and air quality forecasts and reanalyses on a regional scale. In CAMS, data assimilation techniques are applied to provide daily analyses using remote sensing and in-situ...
In order for an air quality model to better emulate and represent the atmospheric pollution in a region, its performance has to be evaluated to both identify uncertainties and reproduce ambient observations.
An air quality modeling system has been implemented at UNAM’s Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Change with the main objective of generating air quality forecasts for the area...
Wildfires are important emission sources that generate large amounts of aerosols into the atmosphere. These hazardous events have been increasing rapidly due to the climate change effects, leading to poor air quality, which causes impacts on the society, including adverse health effects, life and property losses, and the economic burden. To mitigate these effects, many regional and global...
Three agencies that produce daily operational air quality forecasts for North America began to exchange their forecasts on a routine basis in 2017, allowing a side-by-side comparison and ongoing evaluation of four different forecasts. The three agencies were Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), which produces two slightly different forecasts, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric...
Sand and dust storm forecasts and the extended R&D and applications of CUACE
CUACE is the CMA Unified Atmospheric Chemistry Environment which is designed for the numerical chemical weather forecasting. Based on CUACE, two forecasting systems have been developed in CMA. One is the CUACE/Haze-fog which is for heavy pollution warning, the other is CUACE/Dust which has been operationally run...
Air quality (AQ) is a major challenge in Bogota. Frequently, PM ambient standards are exceeded in the southwestern areas of the city. An AQ modeling plataform was estalished in Bogota aiming to understand sources of pollution and evaluate control strategies. Modeling fields allow to estimate pollutant concentrations outside the AQ monitoring network range. Health impacts can be assessed at the...
The Rapid Refresh and High-Resolution Rapid Refresh coupled with Smoke (RAP/HRRR-Smoke) models are based on NOAA’s RAP/HRRR numerical weather prediction modeling systems. The RAP model domain covers the entire North and Central Americas at 13.5km grid spacing. The HRRR domain covers the contiguous US at 3km grid spacing. The RAP-Smoke model provides boundary conditions for the meteorological...
The impacts of climate change on air quality — and thus on human and ecosystem health — act through multiple pathways. The drivers of these impacts are primarily higher temperatures (influencing chemical reaction rates), but also changes in other meteorological factors such as clouds (influencing photochemistry), precipitation (influencing deposition), and winds (influencing pollutant...
As in many other countries, Mexico needs to develop the capacity to model air quality for various diagnostic and forecasting applications. These two applications categories have common challenges and needs specific to one or the other. Both require being able to evaluate the model performance in terms of the maximum pollutants values and their hourly profiles. This requires comparisons...
A daily and monthly estimate of sulfur dioxide (SO2) dispersion emitted by the Turrialba volcano in Costa Rica was made between January and December 2019 with the help of the AERMOD code. The measured data at the emission source such as topography (digital elevation model of the area around the volcano) and other characteristics of the emission source were included in the computer program....
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Air Quality Forecast Capability (NAQFC) utilizes the offline-coupled Global Forecast System (GFS) with the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling system (GFS-CMAQ). Although NAQFC has used carbon-bond (CB) series mechanisms, its capability of deploying different mechanisms for operational forecasting has not been...
