Environmental meteorology addresses the relationships and interactions between meteorological processes and variability, and the chemical state of and processes in the atmosphere affecting atmospheric composition and air quality. Atmospheric chemistry itself depends, apart from anthropogenic and biogenic/natural emissions, on meteorological conditions, while possible climate changes will affect basic physical and chemical processes. Vice-versa, connections between air pollution and climate forcing is also a rising issue.

Understanding, monitoring and predicting the state of the atmospheric environment requires an integrated approach based on various measuring techniques (in situ and remote sensing) together with model simulations. Earth Observation technologies are also becoming powerful tools, as coordinated for instance within the GMES and GEO initiatives.

Along with development in NWP, air quality forecasting aims at higher resolution for regional scales, online coupled models, more effective data assimilation as well as ensemble techniques.

Possible topics for papers and posters in this Environmental Meteorology Session are (but not exclusively):

• Air quality modelling and forecasting, incl. ensemble techniques, online and integrated systems, numerical environmental prediction (NEP) and services, inverse dispersion modelling;
• Understanding meteorological processes affecting atmospheric transport, transformation, biogeochemical cycling and deposition of atmospheric constituents and pollutants;
• Nuclear/chemical/biological emergency responses, population exposure, forecasting, monitoring and impacts of biomass fires, volcano plumes, transportation, or other human activities;
• Atmospheric monitoring and evaluation for environmental atmospheric issues (e.g., air quality, stratospheric ozone, UV-radiation, atmospheric composition) as well as integrated system of systems (GEOSS);
• Impact of feedback processes between climate change and air quality (incl. long-range transport and interactions between local/regional scales and continental/global scales);
• Urban air pollution and other challenges (complex terrain, vegetation, etc) for dispersion modelling;
• Data-assimilation of satellite and remote sensing data and global data analysis;
• Treaty monitoring (CLTRAP, Kyoto, Montreal, ...) and mitigation strategies.

The session supports and thus serves as a dissemination forum for (but does not exclude unrelated papers either): the COST Actions ES0602 (ENCWF), ES0603 (EUPOL) and ES1004 (EuMetChem), the GMES-projects MACC II and FP7 projects MEGAPOLI and PASODOBLE!