Characterization of the spatio-temporal distributions, emission rates and deposition velocities of different aerosol components through assimilating satellite aerosol component observations into a tropospheric chemistry transport model for air quality forecasting

• Applicant: Dr. Thomas Popp
• Subject Area: Atmospheric Science
• Term: from 2004 to 2008
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5423463

The goal of this project is to identify and take advantage of the increased information content of combining atmospheric modeling with satellite observations of different aerosol types. Two advanced components, namely a type-resolving satellite aerosol retrieval method (SYNAER - SYNergetic AErosol Retrieval) and a multi-resolution chemistry transport model (EURAD - EURopean Air pollution Dispersion model system) including a sophisticated aerosol module (MADE - Modal Aerosol Dynamics Model for Europe) are integrated. This is done by variational data assimilation (3D and 4D) including all available error characteristics (covariance matrices) of data and model forecast. With this methodology the full value of ENVISAT (ENVIrionmental SATellite) and future METOP (METeorological Operational Platform) data can be exploited to provide improved short term (i.e. up to 72 hours) forecasts of the spatio-temporal distribution, of tropospheric particles over Europe and the Northern hemisphere. The study of sensitivities of the results to basic assumptions in the integrated approach will be another focus of the project. Especially systematic errors due to the different setup of aerosol size modes in retrieval and model will be investigated. A thorough validation of the results by in situ observations will define the benefits, errors and limitations of the approach.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants