The Regional LOTOS-EUROS Model on Tour

Abstract

While emissions in Europe tend to show negative trends and are relatively well known, for some other regions in the world largely positive emission trends are visible and accurate information on these emissions is lacking. Over these regions satellite observations can play a large role, especially when there are few ground based observations available. Satellite observations have been successfully combined with regional chemistry transport models to provide best possible air quality analyses and forecasts and to derive important information on emission sources.

LOTOS-EUROS is a regional chemistry transport model with an active data assimilation system aimed at modeling the European air quality. To be able to answer the air quality and emission information needs over regions outside Europe a new LOTOS-EUROS version has been developed which can in principle be applied over any region of the world. First calculations have been performed over China. Resulting NO₂ and PM fields have been compared to satellite observations from the OMI instrument and ground based observations in Beijing and Shanghai. The results look promising as the model is able to reproduce the spatial and temporal variability within the NO₂ and PM concentrations. Absolute differences between model and observations can be attributed to missing sources in the model, scaling issues and observational errors.

In this paper we will present the steps that have been taken to develop the new LOTOS-EUROS version, show results over China and discuss encountered issues and further development plans.