Air Quality Forecast for South-East Mediterranean

Introduction

Three day air quality forecasts are carried out operationally at the Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (LAP-AUTh). The LAP-AUTh air quality forecast system consists of the Fifth Generation Penn/State Mesoscale Model, MM5, and the Eulerian photochemical air quality model CAMx. Forecasts of the air pollutants surface concentrations, namely O3, NO2, CO, SO2 and PM10, are issued on a daily basis at 09:00 A.M. LST. Currently, the forecast system predicts the air pollutants concentrations over two modeling domains: a) one coarse grid (10-km) covering the area of the South-East Mediterranean and b) one fine grid (2-km) covering the greater area of Athens (the fine grid covering the greater area of Thessaloniki will be available by the end of September 2008). The maps presented herein depict daily maximum or average concentrations for all considered gaseous and particulate pollutants.