From Urban Air Quality Forecasting and Information Systems to Integrated Urban Hydrometeorology, Climate and Environment Systems and Services for Smart Cities

This presentation is analysing a modern evolution in research and development from specific urban air quality systems to multi-hazard and integrated urban weather, environment and climate systems and services and provides an overview of joint results of large EU FP FUMAPEX, MEGAPOLI, EuMetChem and MarcoPolo projects and international WMO GURME and IUS teams. 

Urban air pollution is still one of the key environmental issues for many cities around the world. A number of recent and previous international studies have been initiated to explore these issues. In particular relevant experience from several European projects will be demonstrated. MEGAPOLI studies aimed to assess the impacts of megacities and large air-pollution hotspots on local, regional and global air quality; to quantify feedback mechanisms linking megacity air quality, local and regional climates, and global climate change; and to develop improved tools for predicting air pollution levels in megacities (doi:10.5194/asr-4-115-2010). FUMAPEX developed for the first time an integrated system encompassing emissions, urban meteorology and population exposure for urban air pollution episode forecasting, the assessment of urban air quality and health effects, and for emergency preparedness issues for urban areas (UAQIFS: Urban Air Quality Forecasting and Information System; doi.org/10.5194/acp-6-2005-2006; doi.org/10.5194/acp-7-855-2007).

While important advances have been made, new interdisciplinary research studies are needed to increase our understanding of the interactions between emissions, air quality, and regional and global climates. Studies need to address both basic and applied research and bridge the spatial and temporal scales connecting local emissions, air quality and weather with climate and global atmospheric chemistry. WMO has established the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Urban Research Meteorology and Environment (GURME) project which provides an important research contribution to the integrated urban services.

Most of the disasters affecting urban areas are of a hydro-meteorological nature and these have increased due to climate change. Cities are also responsible not only for air pollution emissions, but also for generating up to 70% of GHG emissions that drive large scale climate change. Thus, there is a strong feedback between contributions of cities to environmental health, climate change and the impacts of climate change on cities and these phases of the problem should not be considered separately. There is a critical need to consider the problem in a complex manner with interactions of climate change and disaster risk reduction for urban areas (doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2015.11.059, doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2017.05.004).

WMO is promoting safe, healthy and resilient cities through the development of Integrated Urban Weather, Environment and Climate Services (IUS). The aim is to build urban services that meet the special needs of cities through a combination of dense observation networks, high-resolution forecasts, multi-hazard early warning systems, disaster management plans and climate services. This approach gives cities the tools they need to reduce emissions, build thriving and resilient communities and implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The Guidance on IUS, developed by a WMO inter-programme working group, documents and shares the good practices that will allow countries and cities to improve the resilience of urban areas to a great variety of natural and other hazards (https://library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=9903).