Enhancing GeoSphere Austria’s national products by the means of CAMS data

The European Copernicus service for monitoring the atmosphere (CAMS) provides information on atmospheric composition. To foster an increased use of its services, the CAMS National Collaboration Programme (CAMS-NCP) was established. It aims at improving the services of national service providers, such as GeoSphere Austria, based on CAMS products.

To foster an increased use and development of the portfolio of the Copernicus service of the European Union for monitoring the atmosphere (CAMS), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which is responsible for the implementation of CAMS, increasingly cooperates with national service suppliers in Europe, such as GeoSphere Austria. The collaboration is based on the CAMS National Collaboration Programme (CAMS-NCP), in the frame of which national service providers are supported to improve their services on national level based on CAMS products.

The working packages within Austria’s contract in the frame of the National Collaboration Programme focus on:

• Direct use of CAMS products in order to enhance GeoSphere Austria’s short-range emergency SO2 volcanic dispersion products by blending these forecasts with CAMS forecasts, which include information of observed SO2. Volcanic SO2 can be hazardous due to exceedances of SO2 health thresholds causing acute respiratory problems but also for aviation due to causing long-term damage via corrosion and sulfidation of the engines.
• Use of CAMS PM2.5, PM10, and dust products to estimate the fraction of desert dust in particular matter concentrations and its contribution to reduced air quality in Austria. The aim is to support the Environment Agency Austria (Umweltbundesamt) in Reporting activities to EU.
• Downscaling of the European CAMS air quality forecasts via MOS (Model Output Statistic) to improve local air quality forecasts in Austria. Another aim is the downscaling of the European CAMS emission inventory based on the spatial source distributions of the federal Austrian inventories to create an input dataset for highly resolved air quality forecasts. GeoSphere Austria makes forecasts of the most relevant air pollutants (e.g. PM10, O3, NO2, or desert dust) routinely available to the public.
• Communication to raise awareness of products improved via CAMS at national and regional level. This work is conducted in the frame of routine national workshops on air quality and emissions as well as via press releases and online news articles.