PASODOBLE AIRSHEDS: Regional Operational Air Quality Forecasts to Bridge the Gap Between Continental Scale and Local/Urban Scale Services

Abstract

Within the EU FP7 project PASODOBLE five AIRSHED services have been developed to bridge the gap between the GMES core atmospheric service at coarse resolution and the PASODOBLE regional/local/urban downstream services at high resolution. For these Airsheds regional air quality forecasts and analysis are produced at a horizontal resolution of 5 to 10 km. Within this presentation we will present the PASODOBLE Airsheds focusing on the issues encountered while developing the systems. The nesting within the European ensemble forecasts from the core atmospheric service poses a problem due to timing and lack of available information in the ensemble forecasts. Recommendations for the ensemble forecasts have been made to include more components and the timing issue will be solved by the delivery of 96 h instead of 72 h ensemble forecasts. The data assimilation of observations to improve the forecasts forms another issue due to time consuming calculations and lack of timely observations.