The EMEP MSC-W chemical transport model – technical description (original) (raw)
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The EMEP MSC-W chemical transport model – technical description
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2012
The Meteorological Synthesizing Centre-West (MSC-W) of the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP) has been performing model calculations in support of the Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) for more than 30 years. The EMEP MSC-W chemical transport model is still one of the key tools within European air pollution policy assessments. Traditionally, the model has covered all of Europe with a resolution of about 50 km × 50 km, and extending vertically from ground level to the tropopause (100 hPa). The model has changed extensively over the last ten years, however, with flexible processing of chemical schemes, meteorological inputs, and with nesting capability: the code is now applied on scales ranging from local (ca. 5 km grid size) to global (with 1 degree resolution). The model is used to simulate photooxidants and both inorganic and organic aerosols. In 2008 the EMEP model was released for the first time as public domain code, along with all required input data for model runs for one year. The second release of the EMEP MSC-W model became available in mid 2011, and a new release is targeted for summer 2012. This publication is intended to document this third release of the EMEP MSC-W model. The model formulations are given, along with details of input data-sets which are used, and a brief background on some of the choices made in the formulation is presented. The model code itself is available at www.emep.int, along with the data required to run for a full year over Europe.
The EMEP MSC-W chemical transport model – Part 1: Model description
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, 2012
The Meteorological Synthesizing Centre-West (MSC-W) of the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP) has been performing model calculations in support of the Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) for more than 30 yr. The EMEP MSC-W chemical transport model is still one of the key tools within European air pollution policy assessments. Traditionally, the EMEP model has covered all of Europe with a resolution of about 50 × 50 km 2 , and extending vertically from ground level to the tropopause (100 hPa). The model has undergone substantial development in recent years, and is now applied on scales ranging from local (ca. 5 km grid size) to global (with 1 degree resolution). The model is used to simulate photo-oxidants and both inorganic and organic aerosols. In 2008 the EMEP model was released for the first time as public domain code, along with all required input data for model runs for one year. Since then, many changes have been made to the model physics, and input data. The second release of the EMEP MSC-W model became available in mid 2011, and a new release is targeted for early 2012. This publication is intended to document this third release of the EMEP MSC-W model. The model formulations are given, along with details of input data-sets which are used, and brief background on some of the choices made in the formulation are presented. The model code itself is available at www.emep.int, along with the data required to run for a full year over Europe.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2011
PMCAMx-2008, a detailed three-dimensional chemical transport model (CTM), was applied to Europe to simulate the mass concentration and chemical composition of particulate matter (PM) during May 2008. The model includes a state-of-the-art organic aerosol module which is based on the volatility basis set framework treating both primary and secondary organic components as semivolatile and photochemically reactive. The model performance is evaluated against high time resolution aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS) ground and airborne measurements. Overall, organic aerosol is predicted to account for 32 % of total PM 1 at ground level during May 2008, followed by sulfate (30 %), crustal material and sea-salt (14 %), ammonium (13 %), nitrate (7 %), and elemental carbon (4 %). The model predicts that fresh primary OA (POA) is a small contributor to organic PM concentrations in Europe during late spring, and that oxygenated species (oxidized primary and biogenic secondary) dominate the ambient OA. The Mediterranean region is the only area in Europe where sulfate concentrations are predicted to be much higher than the OA, while organic matter is predicted to be the dominant PM 1 species in cen-Correspondence to: S. N. Pandis (spyros@andrew.cmu.edu) tral and northern Europe. The comparison of the model predictions with the ground measurements in four measurement stations is encouraging. The model reproduces more than 94 % of the daily averaged data and more than 87 % of the hourly data within a factor of 2 for PM 1 OA. The model tends to predict relatively flat diurnal profiles for PM 1 OA in many areas, both rural and urban in agreement with the available measurements. The model performance against the high time resolution airborne measurements at multiple altitudes and locations is as good as its performance against the ground level hourly measurements. There is no evidence of missing sources of OA aloft over Europe during this period.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, 2016
The EURODELTA III exercise allows a very comprehensive inter-comparison and evaluation of chemistry transport models performance. Participating models were applied over four different one month period, within a rather limited number of years (from June 2006 to March 2009) thus allowing evaluating the influence of different meteorological conditions on model performance. The exercise was performed under strict requirements concerning the input data. As a consequence, there were very limited differences in the models set up, representing a sort of sensitivity analysis to several aspects of the modelling chains. The models were evaluated mainly on background stations. Even if the meteorology was prescribed, some variables like the planetary boundary layer (PBL) height, the vertical diffusion coefficient are diagnosed in the model pre-processors and explain the spread of models results. For ozone, this study shows the importance of boundary conditions on model calculations and then on t...
2017
The EURODELTA III (ED-III) exercise aimed to perform a comprehensive chemistry transport model inter-comparison study exploiting the data from four intensive measurement campaigns carried out by EMEP. The campaigns were held in different seasons (1–30 June 2006; 8 January–4 February 2007; 17 September–15 October 2008; 25 February–26 March 2009) thus allowing to test the influence of different meteorological conditions on models’ results. Seven models simulated the air quality over the whole Europe: CHIM (CHIMERE; version chim2013), EMEP (rv 4.1.3), LOTO (LOTOSEUROS, V1.8), CAMX (CAMx, v5.41 VBS), MINNI (version 4.7), CMAQ (V5.0.1) and RCG (v.2.1). Except CMAQ, all the models performed simulations over the same domain with the same horizontal spatial resolution. They also used the same input data (emissions, meteorology and boundary conditions) as much as possible. This work presents and discusses the behaviour of the models with regard to the criteria defined in the EU Directive on ...
The important role of aerosols in many environmental issues as climate change, acid rain or smog is long known but there still exists some lack of knowledge in the relevant atmospheric processes, e.g. chemistry, radiative transfer and cloud formation. Models that simulate the transport and transformation of aerosols and gases are one important tool that can contribute to asses the state of knowledge. However, modeling of aerosols can require a complexity which might be beyond the one needed for photochemistry. Additional heterogeneous processes have to be treated and nighttime is getting important too. From an environmental policy point of view aerosols are longer term pollutants which requires the modeling of seasonal or annual cycles. Several European Air Quality Modeling systems (AQM) have in the past been upgraded towards a more detailed description of the tropospheric aerosol components. Substantial developments to include the aerosol dynamical processes such as nucleation, condensation, evaporation and coagulation as well as simulating the inorganic and secondary organic compounds have been made. To better account for these processes a transition from bulk to size-resolved treatments of aerosol microphysics and chemistry has been undertaken in some AQMs. All these model development efforts contribute towards describing the gaseous and aerosol processes in the systems according to the 'one-atmosphere' approach.
Journal of Environmental Protection, 2012
Assessment of harmful impacts and risks of air pollution in case of accidents as well as of long lasting exposition is an important challenge of chemical transport modeling. Sad confirmation of this statement unexpectedly has come from the nuclear power plant accident in Fukushima which occurred while this paper was finalized. Two strategies to comply with the task of impact and risk assessment in extended regions like Central Europe or the Balkans are described. The first one is characterized by application of a single model system to an extended domain. The other one is based on the combined application of several chemical transport models designed for the use in various sub-domains in the region under consideration. Advantages and disadvantages exist for both approaches. For instance, the single model strategy allows unified and harmonized assessment of risks in a larger region, whereas the combined model strategy may provide faster and locally more specific response in emergency cases. The single model approach is treated exploiting applications of the EURAD model system. The combined model approach is a novel way of joint use of chemical transport model systems developed for the Balkans. The models are described and the accuracy of simulations carried out with them is briefly demonstrated by comparison of simulated and observed concentrations of air pollutants. Applications regarding the search of sources for high pollution events and the assessment of risks through known sources are exemplarily discussed. Figure 5. Taylor plot of the daily surface ozone simulated by MM5-CAMx over the network of EMEP stations in 2003. Colors indicate the RMSE in ppbV. Normal standard deviation (σ n ), correlation coefficients and skill score of simulation are indicated by the dotted circles, straight lines and continuous lines, respectively.
2012
Meteorological (Numerical Weather Prediction-NWP) and Air Quality Modeling-two independent problems and research communities Chemical weather forecasting (CWF)-is a new, quickly developing and growing area of atmospheric modeling Simplified concept of CWF includes only operational air quality forecast for the main pollutants by using numerical atmospheric chemical transport (ACT) models driven by NWP Motivation: Physical and Chemical Weather Off-line coupling NWP: CWF: Weather Data Analysis & Assimilation Biogenic and anthropogenic emissions, land use and other input data