7 Nov 2024Agendas now available for the ADMS User Group Meetings, 4-5 December 2024, Cambridge

There is still time to book your tickets for the 2024 ADMS User Group Meetings, which will be held at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge on 4th and 5th December.

• ADMS 6 User Group Meeting, 4th December: view agenda
• ADMS-Urban and ADMS-Roads, 5th December: view agenda

Tickets are available to order through Eventbrite until 23:30 on Tuesday 19th November. Organisations with a valid software support contract are entitled to one or more tickets free of charge depending on the type of licence held.

30 Oct 2024EFT 12.1 update for ADMS-Roads, ADMS-Urban and ADMS-Airport

The UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and the Devolved Administrations have released version 12.1 of the Emissions Factors Toolkit (EFT). Details of the changes for this version are given in the EFT user guide.

We have processed the new EFT and published an update for ADMS-Roads, ADMS-Urban and ADMS-Airport verion 5 on the Other downloads page of our User Area. If you are registered, you can go straight to the download folder. If you are not registered, follow the instructions on the User Area main page.

25 Oct 2024Opportunities to work at CERC

CERC is recruiting!

We are looking for a Scientific Software Engineer to work within our scientific software development team. The successful candidate will be involved in the development of CERC's software products including the world-leading ADMS software.

We are also seeking an Operational Systems Software Engineer to join our air quality forecasting team. The successful candidate will contribute to the development and maintenance of our operational cloud-based air quality forecasting and alerting systems.

Finally, we have an opening for an Air Quality Scientist to join our research team. This role involves working on longer-term research projects, in particular those involving application, evaluation and development of our world-leading ADMS software.

For full details, please see CERC's jobs page.

16 Oct 2024CERC working with UK Environment Agency on Thermal Transport of Air Pollution from Regulated Industries (TAPRI) project

CERC is working with the UK Environment Agency on a six-month contract to contribute to a research project to assess the impacts of thermal air flows on the movement of pollutants.

Thermal winds are generated by horizontal temperature gradients. Over flat terrain, differences in surface temperature cause horizontal temperature gradients, for example near coastlines, resulting in sea and land breezes. Over sloping terrain, horizontal temperature gradients result from stable or unstable stratification, which can lead to downslope (katabatic) or upslope (anabatic) winds.

CERC are working with scientists in the Environment Agency's Chief Scientist's Group to define thermal flow types and their characteristics. We will analyse meteorological, land use and topographical data for selected 'pilot areas' to better understand thermal flows.

The team will explore different approaches that could be used to model air quality impacts of thermal flows. Multiple models will be explored, including KLAM-21 and ADMS. For some sites, Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) data will be used.

This work was awarded to Air Quality Consultants (AQC) as part of Defra's Research Development & Evidence Framework Agreement. The work will be carried out by CERC in collaboration with AQC and John Moncrieff (University of Edinburgh School of Geosciences).

The image shows 'The Barber' katabatic wind that blows down the Grey Valley in Greymouth, New Zealand.

2 Oct 2024CERC attend conferences and workshops

It's a busy time of year for conferences and workshops. Many CERC staff are attending face to face meetings over the next few weeks.

This week, Dr Jenny Stocker is going to Birmingham for the UKRI/Met Office Clean Air Programme Conference. She will be presenting an overview of CERC's Multi-model Air Quality System (MAQS). Next week, Jenny will be at the Forum for Air Quality Modelling (FAIRMODE) technical meeting in Dublin, where she is actively involved in the Microscale Assessment and Sensors & Data-Fusion working groups.

Amy Stidworthy will be attending the Air Quality & Emissions show at the Birmingham NEC next week. Amy will present results from a study where inversion techniques have been used to combine ADMS-Urban modelling with measurements from a network of air quality sensors hosted on telecom infrastructure in the city of Glasgow. Then in early November, Amy will be travelling to Prague to present on the use of CAMS data in CERC's local air quality forecasting services as part of a workshop for CAMS users in the Czech Republic.

On 18^th October, Dr James O'Neill will be presenting at the Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling Liaison Committee (ADMLC) and Institute of Air Quality Management (IAQM) seminar on the use of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) data in air quality modelling. Further information about this event can be found on an earlier post, including details of how to register before the 4^th October. Director Dr David Carruthers will be attending the seminar, contributing to discussions.

Later in October, Dr Chetan Lad and Dr Andrea Di Antonio will be at Routes to Clean Air in Birmingham, with its extensive programme covering current topics for assessing and delivering clean air. They look forward to talks on domestic and agricultural sources of pollution and high-resolution traffic emissions estimates.

Dr Catheryn Price and Rose Jackson are going to Manchester at the beginning of November to attend the Hazards Process Safety Conference. They are particularly interested in gaining further insight into the latest perspectives and knowledge on energy transition considerations, such as battery energy storage system (BESS) hazards, hydrogen production, carbon capture, and CO₂ and ammonia releases.