The EURopean Air Pollution Dispersion (EURAD) model system simulates
the physical, chemical and dynamical processes which control emission, production, transport and deposition of atmospheric
trace species. As a result EURAD provides concentrations of these
trace species in the troposphere over Europe and their removal from
the atmosphere by wet and dry deposition (Hass et al., 1995; Jakobs et al., 1995;
Memmesheimer et al., 1997; Kessler et al., 2001). The system consists
of three sub-models for the treatment of meteorology (NCAR/Pennstate
University; MM5: Mesoscale model, Version 5), chemistry and transport
(EURAD-CTM: Chemistry-Transport-Model) and emission (EEM:
EURAD Emission Model). It has been applied to the simulation of a
large number of air pollution episodes. The majority of cases has been
focussing on ozone and other photo-oxidants, yet aerosols and additional
pollutants like sulphur and ammonia have also been analyzed. The model
system has been applied to the assessment of emission changes as a
contribution to the development of strategies for the reduction of air
pollution levels in Europe.
The model system is using the method of nested simulations. This
enables consistent modelling of air quality from small (local) to
large (continental) scales. Applications with coarse resolution
usually cover the major part of Europe. They can be zoomed down to
regions of the size of central Europe and fractions of it,
e.g. provinces (see also 'description of forecast system'). An extended System (CARLOS: Chemistry and Atmospheric
transport in Regional and Local Scale) is under development which
combines EURAD with a meteorological model of higher resolution so that
finer (beta- and gamma-scale) structures of air pollutant fields can
also be simulated. Daily forecasts of air quality, including aerosols,
are generated with the EURAD model system and are presently available
on this web page in the framework of a pilot study. The model has
proven its capability of supporting field campaigns by forecast and
analysis of the distribution of chemical species in the atmospheric
boundary layer (field experiments in the framework of PROGNOSIS, PROSYS, CONTRACE, BERLIOZ). The EURAD group has been involved in
various previous and ongoing activities of the European environmental
project EUROTRAC.
The chemical mechanisms employed in the EURAD system are the so-called
RADM2 and its successor RACM. They have been completed by the aerosol
mechanism MADE (Modal Aerosole-Dynamics model for EURAD/Europe). The
RADM2 mechanism contains 63 reactive species treated in 158 chemical
reactions.
The model system has permanently been evaluated using chemical and
meteorological data from the atmospheric boundary layer, the free
troposphere and the lower stratosphere. A new and promising field of
research and application is four-dimensional chemical data assimilation combining observations and numerical models to generate
the optimum description and prediction of the atmospheric environment
and its changes.
The majority of research projects of EURAD has been supported by the
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Ministry
of Research of the state of Northrhine-Westfalia, the European Commission
and German environmental agencies. The project has always been open
for cooperation with other environmental research groups on a national
and international basis.
Organigraph of the EURAD-Modelling-System
