CERC news

Estimating emissions from concentration measurements: inverse dispersion modelling report published

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

The Environment Agency recently commissioned CERC and AQC to investigate inverse dispersion modelling methods which could be applied to fugitive (uncontrolled) sources of methane. Inverse dispersion modelling methods allow the estimation of unknown emission rates from concentration measurements. Improving estimates of methane emissions from sources such as landfill sites is important for quantifying greenhouse gas impacts.

The report from this project has now been published online. It includes: a literature review of different inverse dispersion modelling methods; an assessment of the applicability of inverse dispersion modelling methods to different EA-regulated facilities; a study testing four inverse dispersion modelling methods with measurements from three landfill sites; and recommendations for future use of inverse dispersion modelling.

CERC have previously developed and implemented an inverse dispersion modelling approach for improving estimates of urban emissions. For this project we developed a new 'modified Bayesian' inverse modelling technique, due to the short timescale of the plume transect measurements. Measurements at 1 second intervals capture the instantaneous rather than ensemble plume. The concentration fluctuations module in ADMS was used to represent the short-term distribution of concentrations, with inverse modelling applied to the peak modelled and measured concentrations only.

The image shows an example of transect measurements of acetylene (C2H2) tracer gas. The 1 second measured data displays a narrow peak, while standard modelling ('modelled') predicts a wider plume with a lower peak concentration. The maximum model prediction of 1 second concentrations from the fluctuations module ('modelled fluctuations maximum', also showing standard deviation error bars) gives good agreement with the peak measurement. Methane measurements from the same transect were used in the inverse modelling study.

PhD Opportunity to Explore the Pollution-Climate-Health Dilemma

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

CERC is a partner for a PhD studentship harnessing data and air pollution modelling to examine the complex interactions between pollution, climate, and health. The PhD project will delve into the issue of why the public is perceiving a decline in their health and wellbeing due to exposure to air pollutants when, in reality, anthropogenic air pollution emissions have significantly decreased over the last 30 years. One potential factor contributing to this dilemma could be the influence of climate change and the evolving nature of emissions.

The studentship will be awarded by Envision, a doctoral training program which fosters collaboration between researchers, industry partners and NGOs to cultivate a new generation of exceptional environmental scientists. The selected student will benefit from supervision of a team of interdisciplinary experts throughout the PhD journey, including an NHS clinician, and receive training from CERC and RDScientific.

If this rewarding and challenging project appeals to you please consider applying here. Or for further details please contact Professor Sarah Metcalfe, sarah.metcalfe@nottingham.ac.uk or Professor Duncan Whyatt, d.whyatt@lancaster.ac.uk.

Exploring Particulate Deposition Modelling at the ADMLC Seminar

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT

CERC’s director, Dr David Carruthers, shared his insights into particulate deposition modelling using ADMS at the recent seminar organised by the Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling Liaison Committee (ADMLC) on dry deposition of reactive chemicals. David’s presentation explored the complexities of capturing the impact of spatial and temporal variation on modelled deposition, using a copper deposition dataset in the West Midlands as an example. Deposition is a critical topic that spans the environmental, defence and industrial safety sectors. This seminar brought together experts from these fields to collaborate, share knowledge and discuss approaches to modelling and measuring deposition. Access all the presentations from the day here.

This discussion will be continued in the forthcoming ADMS User Group Meeting, with Dr Victoria Hamilton giving a presentation that focuses on practical deposition model applications. This annual face-to-face meeting provides a great opportunity to learn more about the latest ADMS model advances and provides opportunities to network with other experts in the field – we hope to see you there!

Draft agendas now available for the ADMS User Group Meetings, 29-30 November 2023, York

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

There is still time to book your tickets for the 2023 ADMS User Group Meetings, which will be held at Malmaison York on 29th and 30th November.

ADMS 6 User Group Meeting, 29th November: view draft agenda
ADMS-Urban and ADMS-Roads, 30th November: view draft agenda

Tickets are available to order through Eventbrite until 23:30 on Tuesday 14th 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.

CERC sponsor Cambridge Climate and Sustainability Forum (CCSF) event

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

CERC are proud to be the main sponsor for the 2023 Cambridge Climate and Sustainability Forum (CCSF). This was a University of Cambridge student event organised by Cambridge Hub and also sponsored by Cambridge Zero. This year a one-day forum on Climate Change was held on Sunday 15^th October at the Cambridge Union, with over 190 people attending. Topics covered a wide range from Sustainable Growth/degrowth, Activism, Climate Politics and Emerging Technologies. There were break out periods for group discussions, Q&A sessions, as well as time at the end of the day for further dialogue and exchange of ideas. The day was a huge success.

CERC sponsor & present at Routes to Clean Air 2023

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

CERC are once again proud to have sponsored the Institute of Air Quality Management's (IAQM) Routes to Clean Air 2023 conference, held in Manchester on the 10^th and 11^th of October 2023.

The Routes to Clean Air conferences are annual events, providing a valuable opportunity for professionals in air quality and related fields to share their experiences and innovations for improving air quality. This year featured an excellent selection of talks, with key themes including indoor air quality, and the impacts of Net Zero on air quality. The latter included Dr Catheryn Price from CERC presenting a talk entitled 'Dispersion modelling considerations for air quality and Net Zero'.

Speaker details and the conference programme can be found on the IAQM website here, and the slides of the presentations will also be available soon.

IAQM Webinar on Air Quality Futures: Environment Agency horizon scanning

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

CERC were recently commissioned by the Environment Agency (EA) to contribute to their ongoing horizon scanning programme, with a focus on the air pollution sources and situations that the EA is responsible for. Two projects were commissioned as part of the programme.

In one project, CERC worked with Air Quality Consultants to assess the developing approaches and technologies around air quality modelling and monitoring, and prospects for integrating these methods for air quality assessment. Specific methods covered include coupled modelling systems, machine learning and low-cost sensor networks. The other project, led by Aether, looked at the drivers and changes likely to impact on the EA's work over the coming decades. Both projects involved discussions with the EA and experts in the field to identify priority topics.

The Institute of Air Quality Management (IAQM) are hosting a webinar 'Air Quality Futures: Environment Agency horizon scanning' to launch the outcomes of these two projects. The webinar is free to attend and will take place between 12:15 and 13:15 next Tuesday (17^th October). Register here for free and come along!

Booking is now open for the ADMS User Group Meetings, 29-30 November 2023, York

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

You can now book your tickets for the 2023 ADMS User Group Meetings, which will be held at Malmaison York on 29th and 30th November.

The annual ADMS User Group Meetings are a great opportunity to hear the latest ADMS model news and advice from CERC consultants and model developers, to hear talks by model users about their own applications of the software, and to network with other model users.

Tickets are available to order through Eventbrite until 23:30 on Tuesday 21st 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. The draft programme will be published soon.

Post-doctoral opportunities as part of a new Wellcome Trust funded health-centred West Midlands study

Fri, 25 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

CERC are pleased to be collaborating with a multi-disciplined team on a new Wellcome Trust funded, West Midlands based project: “A Health-centred Systems Approach towards Net-Zero: Transforming regional climate mitigation policies”. The overall aim of WM-Net Zero is to transform regional Net-Zero policy solutions by adopting a health-centred systems approach.

WM-Net Zero brings together scientists from a range of disciplines (including social science, climate, air quality, data, health and economics) from the Universities of Birmingham, Surrey, and York, and stakeholders from West Midlands Combined Authority, Defra, Birmingham City Council, Clean Air Fund, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, Coventry City Council, Solihull Council and WSP in the UK to develop new tools and science understanding.

This work builds on CERC’s previous collaborations with the University of Birmingham, for example the successful West Midlands Air Quality Improvement Programme (WM-Air). Dr Jian Zhong, from the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, has published papers demonstrating how ADMS-Urban can be used to model baseline air quality over a large metropolitan domain and, of particular relevance to this new project, an investigation into impacts of net zero policies on air quality.

The WM-Net Zero team are currently recruiting for a research fellow (deadline 29th August) and an impact fellow (deadline 30th August).

About the image: This shows the reduction in annual mean NO2 (µg.m^-3) for (a) 2030 Net Zero Scenario (NZS) and (b) 2030 Electric Vehicles (EV) (transport decarbonisation) scenario relative to 2030 Business-As-Usual (BAU) scenario; and percentage change for (c) 2030 NZS and (d) 2030 EV scenario relative to 2030 BAU scenario.

Creation of an air pollution scenario impact tool

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

CERC has developed a digital air pollution impact tool to model the impacts of changes to air pollution sources and the adoption of mitigation measures, on levels of air pollution exposure. The tool is potentially scalable to all London local authorities, and could be a 'ground-breaking' example for city authorities around the world, as are CERC's Breathe London and airTEXT services.

This is a joint commission by Impact on Urban Health (IoUH) and Southwark and Lambeth Councils, who have a shared ambition to reduce the harmful impact air pollution has on people's health, particularly those most at risk.

CERC selected sensitive locations in Lambeth and Southwark according to the risk from air pollution exposure and focusing on areas of deprivation, according to Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD).

We used ADMS-Urban to calculate concentrations of NO₂, PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 at these locations and calculated the contribution of different source groups at each location.

Our findings allowed us to identify outcomes and measures that affect exposure to air pollution at each location, such as changes in traffic movements, emissions performance of vehicles, or the use of different fuels for heating and cooking. We modelled the impact of each measure on exposure to the pollutants at each sensitive receptor site.

Our web-based interactive tool encapsulates the model results and allows the user to view the impact of different combinations of mitigation measures.

We assessed the health impact of the mitigation measures using the modelled concentrations and population, age and health data. Our findings and the methodology used for the work can be found in our report. In two years' time, CERC will review the model, checking usability and updating inputs where new data has become available.

2023 ADMS User Group Meetings: 29-30 November 2023, York

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

The 2023 ADMS User Group Meetings will be held at Malmaison Hotel, York, on the following dates:

ADMS 6, Wednesday 29^th November
ADMS-Urban and ADMS-Roads, Thursday 30^th November

CERC awarded DfT aviation air quality modelling contract for ICAO CAEP

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

The UK Department for Transport (DfT) has awarded CERC a two year contract to carry out local air quality modelling of aviation emissions for the International Civil Aviation Organization Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (ICAO CAEP).

The CAEP is a technical committee of the ICAO Council, which assists the Council in formulating new standards and recommended practices relating to the environmental impact of aviation.

One of ICAO's environmental goals is to limit or reduce the impact of aviation emissions on Local Air Quality. Since the late 1970s, ICAO has been developing measures to address emissions from aircraft engines and other airport sources in the vicinity of an airport.

To inform its assessment of the impacts of international aviation emissions, CAEP uses computer-based modelling and databases sponsored by Member States and international organisations participating in CAEP.

CERC's work under this contract will be under the auspices of the CAEP Modelling and Databases Group (MDG). Our work will include modelling test cases of the local air quality impacts of aircraft emissions for a range of airports. We will also investigate ways in which the modelling process might be streamlined and improved.

CERC's model ADMS-Airport will be used for this project. ADMS-Airport is one of the approved models for the ICAO CAEP MDG; it is listed in the ICAO Airport Air Quality Manual as a typical model used in the advanced and sophisticated approaches. Following the use of the model in DfT's Project for Sustainable Development of Heathrow (PSDH)—Adding Capacity at Heathrow, DfT's expert panel on modelling was in "full agreement in the recommendation of the CERC model ADMS-Airport for future modelling work at Heathrow".

To view the image in larger size, right click and open the image in new tab.

ADMS 6 & ADMS-Screen 6 released

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

CERC are delighted to announce that version 6 of ADMS and ADMS-Screen is now available for download from the user area. Existing licence holders will be receiving an email with their new licence shortly.

ADMS is an advanced dispersion model used to model the air quality impact of existing and proposed industrial installations. Its many features include allowance for the impacts of buildings, complex terrain, coastlines and variations in surface roughness; dry and wet deposition; NOx chemistry schemes; short term releases (puffs); calculation of fluctuations of concentration on short timescales, odours; condensed plume visibility; and allowance for radioactive decay including γ-ray dose.

Some of the new features in version 6 of ADMS include

Buildings: enhancements to the modelling of buildings, including the ability to automatically determine a main building. Easier plotting of the effective building and changes to the way the effect of buildings are modelled, particularly for upwind sources.
Source apportionment: the new 'output per source' option will write the output contribution from each source to each receptor in a new set of output files. The data in these files can be visualised in the Mapper by colour-coding the sources by what degree each source contributes to the concentration at the selected receptor for a selected met. line.
Time-varying emissions: the ability to specify profiles on a per source per pollutant basis, along with improvements to the entering of time varying emissions factors on screen.
New tools: 'Layer statistics' to find and display the minimum, maximum and X, Y location for each numerical field in a layer. ‘Clip layer to polygons’ allows individual features from one layer to be ‘clipped’ to polygon(s) or polyline(s) from a separate layer. Easily create receptor point (.asp) files containing several different sets of 3D gridded output points, in polar, Cartesian or rotated Cartesian form. Open ADMS-Urban and ADMS-Roads model files (.upl files) directly in ADMS.
Much more: Please view all the updates in detail in the What's New? guide.

For further information on this release or any CERC products please email us.

New research projects for improved regulatory modelling

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Organisations which protect air quality need rapid and robust ways to assess the pollution impacts of industrial activities. The UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Environment Agency (EA) commission research to improve regulatory modelling techniques. CERC are working on several research projects for both organisations as part of Defra’s Research Development & Evidence Framework Agreement, in collaboration with Air Quality Consultants (AQC).

It is important to quantify landfill emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, but difficult to make accurate and representative emissions measurements. CERC are exploring inverse modelling methods for estimating landfill methane emissions from concentration measurements in two linked projects for the EA. These aim to better understand variations in methane releases and to recommend methods for combining measurements with modelling, to improve ongoing assessments of landfill emissions.

CERC and AQC are collaborating on an EA funded study of established and developing air quality assessment methods which use modelling, monitoring and integrated techniques. The aim is to identify aspects of air quality assessment where new research would be valuable. This includes defining preparatory work for new approaches and providing a strategy for future research funding. The project team investigated the opinions of key experts in the field through recent workshops and individual interviews.

Carbon capture and storage technologies are being developed to reduce the climate change impacts of combustion processes. Amine chemicals used to remove carbon dioxide from exhaust gases can be released to the atmosphere in small quantities, potentially creating harmful products (nitramines and nitrosamines) through chemical reactions. CERC previously developed ADMS to model amine chemistry. For ADMS 6 this module has been extended to model multiple types of amine and associated products simultaneously. With support from Defra, CERC are investigating sensitivities of the ADMS amine modelling and developing a tool to calculate the chemical properties for a wide range of amines.

Air pollution screening methods use simple estimates of impacts to assess whether more detailed modelling is needed. CERC have a leading technical role in an EA funded project to improve screening techniques for small industrial sources. These sources have release heights up to 20 m above ground and are often affected by nearby buildings. CERC are also reviewers in a project for the EA assessing air quality impacts from intermittent generator testing activity.

We look forward to sharing project outcomes with the air quality modelling community.

Recent CERC research publications

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Alongside core activities of developing air quality modelling software and providing environmental consultancy services, CERC take an active role in UK and international scientific research activities. 2022 was a busy year for CERC's research team, with ten published co-author journal articles.

New software development and evaluation was covered in two papers. The improved elevated roads modelling implemented in ADMS-Urban and ADMS-Roads, commissioned by Highways England (now National Highways), was discussed and evaluated by O'Neill et al., upper image. Seaton et al. described the simplified near-road dispersion model based on ADMS-Urban developed within the SPF Clean Air Programme Multi-Model Air Quality System for Health Research (MAQS-Health) project, managed by the UK Met Office.

CERC were co-authors in two publications related to the NERC-funded West Midlands Air Quality Improvement Programme (WM-Air) project, led by the University of Birmingham. Regional modelling of fine particulates including regional and national emissions scenarios was described in Mazzeo et al. Coupled regional-to-local modelling using the ADMS-Urban Regional Model Link system to generate street-scale concentrations was covered in Zhong et al., with annual average NO₂ concentrations shown in the lower image.

CERC's work in developing a system to predict adverse meteorological conditions at Hong Kong International Airport was reported in two papers in the Atmosphere journal. These latest results, from a productive collaboration with Hong Kong Observatory that began in 2010, describe the development and evaluation of a wind shear forecasting system.

CERC also contributed to a study of emissions in Beijing, using modelling of perturbed ensembles (Yuan et al.), in collaboration with researchers from the University of Cambridge and Tsinghua University Beijing. Work with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) studied the consequences of reducing emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and/or volatile organic compounds (VOC) in Guangzhou (China) and surrounding areas using regional-to-local modelling, reported in Zhang et al. Other activities included evaluation of uncertainty in urban air quality sensor measurements (Peters et al.) and consideration of standardised source terms for dispersion and transmission modelling of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (Stettler et al.).

Further information about CERC research is available from our earlier co-author publications and presentations. Publications from other groups using our modelling software are also available.