PANAME – Project synergy of atmospheric research in the Paris region

The Paris region (France) is increasingly the focus of urban atmospheric research. Numerous national and international research projects have chosen Europe’s largest metropolitan region as their study area to better understand and predict critical hazards (incl. heat, air pollution, thunderstorms) in the context of a changing climate. Located on rather flat terrain in continental, mid-latitude climates, the densely populated Paris region is very suitable for the evaluation of urban processes in numerical simulations at different scales. The European research infrastructures ACTRIS and ICOS are developing strategies for the improved operational monitoring of air pollution and greenhouse gas budgets, respectively. Various research projects are conducting fundamental process studies and model developments to investigate the dynamics and chemistry of the urban atmosphere and its interactions with the rural surroundings and regional-scale flow to better quantify associated health risks and inform sustainable planning.

In addition to numerous modelling activities (chemistry-transport, numerical weather prediction, climate projections), diverse atmospheric observations are collected. These include dense surface station networks, turbulent flux towers, and ground-based atmospheric remote sensing to monitor the atmospheric boundary layer. This multi-project context motivates the pooling of resources.

To facilitate efficient project synergy and to optimise the coordination of the individual experimental campaigns, the PANAME initiative (https://paname.aeris-data.fr/) was established. PANAME provides a framework to optimise the design of the Paris region measurement network and helps to standardise the operations. A professional, multi-disciplinary data portal is developed at the French AERIS atmospheric data centre to host the PANAME observations and model results. Here, data are collected and formatted, standardised advanced products are derived from the diverse sensor networks and high-quality visualisations are generated in near real-time. The presentation will provide an overview on the scientific objectives of the on-going projects, the deployment of measurements and simulation tools, and the data portal design.