Destination Earth Air Quality Use Case DE370C
Table of Contents
Within the Destination Earth (DestinE) air quality use case contracted by ECMWF, Forschungszentrum Jülich is developing a user interface for analyzing and forecasting air pollution. These simulations will explore the DestinE Digital Twin on Weather-Induced and Geophysical Extremes and result in an on-demand service. Jülich scientists therefore combine state-of-the-art regional and high-resolution chemical transport modelling applying the EURAD-IM with innovative machine learning applications that rest on open access databases of air quality observations (e.g. TOAR-II database) and atmospheric model data. Air quality simulation products will herein be provided basing on a novel conjunction of air quality data and in a remarkably high resolution. In an extension, simulations of emission scenarios will allow the core users to assess local air quality in consideration of diverse potential mitigation strategies.
Background
Destination Earth is an initiative under the EU Digital Europe Programme to boost Green Deal actions on policies for climate change adaptation and geophysical extremes. ECMWF is developing the first two digital twins:
- Climate change adaptation
- Weather-induced and geophysical extremes
building digital replicas of the Earth system and generating high-quality simulations with unprecedented accuracy.
The DestinE air quality use case DE370C is developed in close cooperation with the German Environment Agency (UBA) and the North Rhine-Westphalia Office of Nature, Environment and Consumer Protection (LANUV) as core users.
Project run time
1 January 2023 to 30 April 2024
The Air Quality User Interface
The DestinE air quality use case develops an interactive and web-based air quality forecasting system. From this user interface, users will be able to execute high-resolution air quality forecasts for selected regions (field forecasting) or at the location of selected monitoring stations (point forecasting). Emission scenarios can be simulated by modulation of emission input data in different EURAD-IM forecast runs.
The simulations will be executed on Euro-HPC systems (JURECA-DC at JSC and LUMI at CSC). The forecast results will be provided as interactive map or timeseries visualizations. Coarser resolved field forecasts can possibly be downscaled based on a machine learning algorithm. For individual data analysis, all data will be made available via a download option.
The Air Quality Use Case Demonstrator
Typical air quality extremes that often implicate an enhanced risk for health and environmental impacts are increased near-surface ozone or accumulated particle concentrations. For demonstrating the service and benefit of the DestinE air quality use case, two particulate matter episodes in January and February 2017 are selected as in parts of Europe, winter smog locally occurred. In polluted areas, high temperatures and strong irradiances induce high ozone concentrations. The high ozone episode in Germany in late July - early August 2018 has therefore been selected for additional demonstrator simulations. A third showcase episode of the air quality use case is planned and to be selected by coupling the air quality system to the operational DestinE Extremes digital twin.
In accordance with the area of interest of our core users LANUV and UBA all demonstrator simulations will be made available for the target regions of Berlin-Brandenburg and North-Rhine Westphalia.
Emission scenario simulation options will at this point be pre-defined in the use case. The emission modulations will be solely applied on the target regions to evaluate the potential of local air pollution mitigation strategies. The emission scenarios that are selected are:
- Standard scenario: Simulation of air quality with business as usual emissions.
- No-emission scenario: Simulation neglecting all anthropogenic emissions in the target domain.
- Home-office and energy saving scenario: Following the role model of the Covid-19 pandemic, road transport and residential emissions are reduced by 50 % and 20 %, respectively.
- Industry scenario: Restriction of industrial activities and reduction of power generation, industry, fugitives, and solvents emissions by 70 %.
- E-traffic scenario: Replacement of current car fleet by low-carbon emission vehicles. Diesel and gasoline emissions are reduced by 25 % and 80 %, respectively, while abrasion emissions are increased by 10 % due to expected increase in vehicular weight.
- Fireplace scenario: Replacement of a certain percentage of conventional heating systems by wood firing.
The Team
Project PI
Dr. Anne Caroline Lange
Senior Scientist Head of group "Air Quality and Emission Optimization"
- Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK)
- Troposphere (IEK-8)
Room 3029
Expert on EURAD-IM air quality simulations, data assimilation, and emission scenarios
Project Co-PI
Sabine Schröder
Scientific Programmer
- Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS)
- Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC)
Room 338
Expert on data management, service development and maintenance
Dr. Philipp Franke
Senior Scientist Head of group "Air Quality and Emission Optimization"
- Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK)
- Troposphere (IEK-8)
Room 3029
Expert on ensemble EURAD-IM air quality simulations, data assimilation, and emission scenarios
Dr. Elmar Friese
Senior Scientist
- Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK)
- Troposphere (IEK-8)
Room 1040
Specialist on EURAD-IM air quality simulations , data assimilation, and workflow optimisation
Dr. Michael Langguth
Postdoctoral Researcher
- Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS)
- Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC)
Room 4001
Specialist on machine learning and downscaling of atmospheric data
Expert on interface programming, service development, maintenance and improvements
PD Dr. Martin Schultz
Head of research group Earth System Data Exploration and co-lead of division Large Scale Data Science
- Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS)
- Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC)
Room 4010
Expert on data science and deep learning methods to Earth System Data, i.e. weather, air quality and climate data
More Links
ECMWF Destination Earth: www.ecmwf.int/destinE
European commission: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/destination-earth
“Destination Earth is a European Union funded initiative launched in 2022, with the aim to build a digital replica of the Earth system by 2030. The initiative will be jointly implemented by three entrusted entities: the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) responsible for the creation of the first two ‘digital twins’ and the ‘Digital Twin Engine’, the European Space Agency (ESA) responsible for building the ‘Core Service Platform’, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), responsible for the creation of the ‘Data Lake’.”
