Our system for the forecast of regional air quality relies on two main elements: a meteorological mesoscale model (the PennState/NCAR MM5 model) and a regional chemistry-transport model (CHIMERE model).
MM5 model is developed at the Pennsylvania State University and at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and is available for free. The meteorological model provides input data such as winds, temperature and humidity necessary to run the model of transport and chemistry. The meteo model is forced by daily ECMWF forecast and run on a grid with an horizontal resolution of 30 km.
The forecast of the evolution and transformation of chemical species is provided by the CHIMERE model. CHIMERE is developed in Paris (France) by a number of french institutions: Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, C.N.R.S., INERIS, LISA (C.N.R.S.). It is a free software available under the GNU General Public License. In our system the model runs on a grid of 0.5° × 0.5° longitude × latitude. The initial condition of the atmospheric composition is provided by the simulation of the previous day. Boundary conditions are provided by a climatology derived from 10 years of simulation of the global models LMDz-INCA for gases and GOCART for aerosols. The emission inventory is a combination of data from: EMEP (Yearly totals), IER (Time variations), TNO (Aerosol emissions), UK Dept of Environment (VOC speciation).
Everyday a 72h run is performed starting at h 12:00 of the previous day. The MM5 meteo model is run first and then its output is used by the chemical model CHIMERE to predict pollutant levels over Italy and surroundings. At the end of the simulation process another automatic procedure updates the figures visible on this web site.
For any further information about the system please contact: Gabriele Curci. For any further information specifically about the two mentioned models (MM5 and CHIMERE) please refer to the respective web pages.
Final remark: please note that the system is still under development and testing!