Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
2.1 Regional Air Quality Modelling: A Few Examples
of Recent Progresses and Remaining Questions
Robert Vautard
LSCE/IPSL, Laboratoire CEA/CNRS/UVSQ
Abstract
The rising concern of health impacts of atmospheric pollution necessitates
an increasing need of acute understanding, accurate description and prediction of
air quality. Major progresses in knowledge and techniques over several fronts
have been achieved in the last decade or so (Monks et al., 2009). More chemical
species have been characterized, with increased accuracy, and over larger and finer
spatial scales. These progresses have been obtained through observations made
during intensive campaigns and routine monitoring. Many progresses have also
been obtained through regional-scale modelling, taking into account intercontinental
transport and global-scale atmospheric composition changes. The objective of
this paper is to give an overview of the contribution of regional-scale modelling to
these progresses. It focuses on a selected sample of results obtained at the Institute
Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL) in collaborative projects with INERIS, Meteo-France
and the TNO in the Netherlands, among others.
1. Patterns of Air Quality
For more than 10 years now, the Institute Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL) has been
developing research on atmospheric chemistry through observations and model-
ling. At global scale, the online and offline aerosol/chemistry LMDz-INCA model
has been developed and used in many studies (Hauglustaine et al., 2004). At
regional to urban scale, IPSL and INERIS teams gathered their efforts to develop
the CHIMERE model (Schmidt et al., 2001; Vautard et al., 2003; Bessagnet et al.,
2004), which has now worldwide applications. These tools have been used basically
to complement atmospheric composition and air pollution observations in order to
understand their interaction with transport, meteorology or climate, for instance in
severe episodes, and also in operational air quality forecasting or emission control
scenario analysis. The models work together, LMDzINCA feeding boundary con-
ditions of CHIMERE (see, e.g. Szopa et al., 2006). The chain of models and the
respective spatial is summarized in
Fig. 1.
The models were designed to allow
long-term, multi-seasonal, multi-annual or multi-decadal simulations.
