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Air Quality Forecasting |
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CERC's air quality forecasting system is based around the widely used ADMS-Urban pollution dispersion modelling system. Using this software, the emissions from a variety of urban and industrial sources can be examined, to give concentrations at a high degree of spatial accuracy across the city. CERC is able to provide air quality forecasting at the urban and local scale throughout the UK and in other countries. Please contact us if you would like to learn more about what we can offer for your particular area. airTEXT is a free air quality information service for people who live or work in London. People who sign up for airTEXT will receive voice or text message alerts when air pollution is forecast to be higher than normal. The service is aimed at people who suffer from heart and breathing problems, whose health or quality of life may be affected by air pollution. For more information please visit the airTEXT web site. The sites currently published by CERC include: http://www.cerc.co.uk/york/
- The City of York Air quality forecasts for the City of Budapest are published by DASY
using ADMS-Urban, and can be viewed by following the links below:
ADMS-Urban is in use in most of the urban areas of the UK, and its outputs have been extensively validated in a number of studies published in the scientific literature. The base pollution data used in the system are collated from national emissions records and the local inventories currently used in the review and assessment procedure. Figures for all the major pollutants are calculated by looking at vehicle flows on major roads, outputs from industry, releases from residential and commercial areas and pollution that drift over the UK from our European neighbours.
In order to produce air quality forecasts these emissions are run in conjunction with predicted levels of key meteorological parameters - wind speed and directions, temperature and cloud cover, which are transferred directly from the PA WeatherCentre to CERC. This allows us to generate a data file which indicates air quality levels over the next 3 days. This data file is used as the basis for a wide variety of maps, animations, tables and summaries - we aim to make the data as clear and concise as possible. One key advantage we offer is the ability to generate high resolution maps. These can be in the form of colour-coded air quality "contours" over-laid on a map of the area, or as labels over specific streets, suburbs or towns. Such maps can be formatted to suit a wide variety of media - including publication on the web. The labelling scheme used in the
maps can be either the traditional "LOW", "MODERATE",
"HIGH" or "VERY HIGH" or alternatively, we can make
use of the latest system first employed by the broadcast media during
the summer of 1999. Used by the BBC in their national weather forecasts,
this 1 - 10 scale gives information that is more detailed and has greater
sensitivity to changes in the air quality concentrations. |
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