A customisable downscaling approach for local-scale meteorological and air pollution forecasting: Performance evaluation for a year of urban meteorological forecasts

  • Authors:

  • M. Thatcher;P. Hurley

  • Affiliations:

  • CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, 107 Station Street, Aspendale, Melbourne, Victoria 3195, Australia;CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, 107 Station Street, Aspendale, Melbourne, Victoria 3195, Australia

  • Venue:
  • Environmental Modelling & Software
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

In this paper we develop a customisable downscaling approach for local-scale air quality and meteorological forecasting applications, using The Air Pollution Model (TAPM) with the Conformal Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM). The CCAM-TAPM system allows users to define their own local pollution emissions, terrain and land-use data and then downscale the meteorological and air pollution forecast on PC hardware. To evaluate the meteorological component of the CCAM-TAPM system, we have produced 7-day forecasts dynamically downscaled to 3km resolution, centred on Melbourne (Australia). We produce 365, 7-day forecasts with a forecast starting on each day during 2003, initialised with National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) 1^o Global Forecasting System (GFS) analyses (i.e., no boundary conditions are needed). We estimate that CCAM-TAPM can simulate 10-m wind speeds and 2-m temperatures for up to two forecast days with errors within 10% of previous TAPM studies in which air pollution was successfully predicted.