Abstract
In this paper, an operational forecasting and daily assessment system of air quality is presented. This new system is thought of as a Copernicus-CAMS downstream national service, able to develop and implement a service for air quality forecasting and monitoring in the Italian domain, running every day on the National territory. The system is being developed on behalf of a cooperation between Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) and Sistema Nazionale Protezione Ambiente (SNPA). SNPA is the network between Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e Ricerca Ambientale (ISPRA) and the Regional Environmental Agencies (ARPAs). The objective of the cooperation is to provide full operation service in terms of continuity, sustainability, and availability of the air quality forecast and evaluation services at the national level. The system forecasts and analyzes air quality throughout Italy, with a focus on Italian regions, for the principal pollutants: Particulate matter with diameter smaller than 10 μm (PM10), ozone (O3), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). It includes a Chemical Transport Model (CTM) nested with the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) global model and data from the air quality monitoring stations in Italy. The system, under public control and based on open software, is now under testing. To date, it is able to deliver free open data, which is available to environmental agencies and citizens. The data are delivered both as maps and graphs, and as numerical data, useful for providing boundary conditions to local–high resolution-air quality models or for developing customized services. In this work, a downscaling application to a regional nested domain highlights how the new air quality forecasting system gains better results than the Copernicus-CAMS system.
Highlights
For a long period, the adverse effects of air pollution on human health and the environment have been demonstrated
This paper aims to present the development and implementation of an operational service for the air quality monitoring and forecasting, running every day over Italian domain
To estimate the degree of agreement between the concentrations of the principal pollutant in -situ versus Chemical Transport Model (CTM) model simulations over each of the air quality stations in the domain under investigation, classical statistical scores were used for the evaluation
Summary
The adverse effects of air pollution on human health and the environment have been demonstrated. In Italy, in the early 1990s, the association between energy consumption (main driver of atmospheric pollution) and emissions into the air was revealed. A significant reduction of the latter is sought. Emissions into the atmosphere did not increase proportionally. The high concentrations of air pollutants still occur, and the problem is acute, especially in the cold months during the fall and winter seasons, when air quality issues are most detected [1]. Current health studies demonstrate that pollution plays a significant role in issues related to health due to high urban population densities, for example, at the local scale
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