Events

The Aerosol and Cloud, Convection and Precipitation (ACCP) Webinar Series leads off with Advances in Aerosol Assimilation and Future Perspectives by Dr. Angela Benedetti, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). Recent years have seen the rise of global operational atmospheric composition models for several applications including climate monitoring, air quality forecasting, provision of boundary conditions for regional air quality models, and energy sector applications, to mention a few. Typically global forecasts are provided in the medium-range, up to five days ahead. Centres with aerosol analysis and forecasting capabilities have invested a considerable amount of effort in exploiting aerosol related observations from spaceborne sensors as well as ground-based networks both for assimilation and verification. For example, ECMWF has developed the capability to run its Integrated Forecast System (IFS) with atmospheric composition variables, thanks to a series of EU-funded projects (GEMS, MACC, MACC-II, MACC-III), and now Copernicus. The composition configuration is at the core of the Copernicus Atmospheric Service (CAMS) which provides operational 4D-Var analyses and forecasts of aerosols and reactive gases. Other operational and research centres such as NRL, NASA and JMA, UK MetOffice, to mention a few, run aerosol forecasts and analysis. The collaborative efforts of these centres have culminated in the International Cooperative for Aerosol Prediction (ICAP) which maintains a multi-model ensemble system for aerosol forecasts, based on the systems run at the individual participating centres. At the heart of this effort there has been constant dialogue and collaboration with data providers such as space agencies (NASA, ESA, EUMETSAT, JAXA, etc) with the intention of using the datasets in the most meaningful way. In this seminar, we will review the state-of-the-art in aerosol analysis by providing an overview of the current status of the aerosol analyses at the various centres with an emphasis on the data used in the assimilation, rather than the specific assimilation approach. Additionally we will provide an outlook on future use of aerosol data for analysis applications based on current and planned missions.