Abstract
Abstract. The ADRIMED (Aerosol Direct Radiative Impact on the regional climate in the MEDiterranean region) project was dedicated to study the atmospheric composition during the summer 2013 in the European Mediterranean region. During its campaign experiment part, the WRF (Weather Research and Forecast Model) and CHIMERE models were used in the forecast mode in order to decide whether intensive observation periods should be triggered. Each day, a simulation of 4 days was performed, corresponding to (D-1) to (D+2) forecast leads. The goal of this study was to determine whether the model forecast spread is lower or greater than the model biases compared to observations. It is shown that the differences between observations and the model are always higher than those between the forecasts. Among all forcing types used in the chemistry-transport model, it is shown that the strong bias and other related low forecast scores are mainly due to the forecast accuracy of the wind speed, which is used both for the mineral dust emissions (a threshold process) and for the long-range transport of aerosol: the surface wind speed forecast spread can reach 50%, leading to mineral dust emission forecast spread of up to 30%. These variations are responsible for a moderate forecast spread of the surface PM10 (a few percentage points) and for a large spread (more than 50%) in the mineral dust concentration at higher altitudes, leading to a mean AOD (aerosol optical depth) forecast spread of ±10%.
Highlights
The regional air quality originally focused on photochemical pollution such as ozone and nitrogen dioxides, (Fenger, 2009)
This interest was partly motivated by the European “air quality directives” of 1996 that specified policies to reduce air pollution, at that time only focusing on gaseous species (Monks et al, 2009)
While the particulate matter with a diameter less than 10 μm has been controlled for many years, the last 10 years showed intensification of aerosol monitoring, in particular through the added routine measurements of PM2.5 (European Union, 2008)
Summary
The regional air quality originally focused on photochemical pollution such as ozone and nitrogen dioxides, (Fenger, 2009). While the particulate matter with a diameter less than 10 μm (called PM10) has been controlled for many years, the last 10 years showed intensification of aerosol monitoring, in particular through the added routine measurements of PM2.5 (European Union, 2008). In this context, the Mediterranean is well known as a hot spot for its high aerosol concentrations and high spatial and temporal variability (Millan et al, 2005). In order to reduce a potential damage due to the overly high aerosol concentrations, it is necessary to improve our knowledge of all these aspects (Carslaw et al, 2010)
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