An air quality multi-model prediction system for the Basque Country

In this work, we present a system developed by Tecnalia and Euskalmet for air quality forecast at local level, the system runs since 2019 in order to provide different air quality products to support some operational task in Basque Meteorology Agency (Euskalmet).  

The air quality prediction multi-model system developed is based on two main modelization strategies, one using CHIMERE and another one based on WRF-CHEM.  The system  have been implemented for the hourly prediction of air quality for the pollutants CO, NO2, O3, PM10, PM2.5 and SO2 in the domain of the Basque Country. Both models are executed daily with a prediction horizon of up to 4 days and with resolutions around 1 km. In the case of the CHIMERE chemical transport model, four nested domains are considered, being the coarser domain Western Europe and the finer one the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (CAE), WRF model meteorological fields are included offline. In the case of WRF-CHEM, three nested domains are implemented, the first one being Western Europe and the last one the CAE, in this case meteorology given by the WRF model and the pollutant transport module, are executed online. In both cases, the WRF meteorological model starts from the initial and boundary conditions given by the one-degree GFS global prediction model. The emissions used by both models are those given by the EMEP emissions inventory for the CHIMERE model and EDGAR for the anthropogenic emissions required by WRF-CHEM. Subsequently, for the domain of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, a proprietary emissions inventory has been used.

In this contribution, main results of the implementation of the system are shown, including post-processing, products generation and validation. Finally, some conclusions from pre-operational and operational experiences are presented.