Modelling the spreading of air pollution with weather models

Industrial emissions affect the air quality in Switzerland. There is an inhomogeneous distribution of emission sources causing the pollution. Emissions from Switzerland as well as different European regions may contribute to the pollution measured in Switzerland. Further, the highly variable meteorological transport of the air pollution determines the air quality. As a decision basis for the air pollution control politics, it is of fundamental importance to identify emission sources, and to model the air pollution transport mechanisms. To access the meteorological transport of emissions, we employ weather models such as the ECMWF model (European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast, Reading) and the Local Model of MeteoSchweiz. A number of methods and techniques have been developed for the localization and the quantification of the emission impact. In our studies, two approaches are employed. Firstly, trajectory statistics are used as a tool to localize and map source regions. Thus, receptor data are combined with airmass histories to perform source apportionment. In a second step, a Lagrangian Particle Dispersion Model (LPDM) is used for case studies to quantify emission sources.