A SYSTEM FOR INFORMATION AND FORECAST OF AIR QUALITY OVER BULGARIA

9th International Multidisciplinary Scientific GeoConference - SGEM2009, www.sgem.org, SGEM2009 Conference Proceedings/ ISBN 10: 954-91818-1-2, June 14-19, 2009, Vol. 2, 297-304 pp

ABSTRACT

Both, the current level of air pollution studies and social needs in the country, are in a
stage mature enough for creating Bulgarian Chemical Weather Forecasting and
Information System. For the purpose, a project is funded by the National Scientific
Fund aiming at designing and setting up such a system able to provide timely,
informative and reliable forecast products tailored to the needs of various users. The
system is foreseen to provide in real time forecast of the spatial/temporal Air Quality
behaviour for the country and (with higher resolution) for selected sub-regions and
cities on the base of the weather forecast and national emission inventory. The system is
aiming at integration within the European Chemical Weather Forecast community,
utilizing knowledge and data, as well as the “model ensemble” possibilities.

The country-scale part of the system is designed and is being tested. It is based on the
US EPA Models-3 System: MM5, CMAQ and SMOKE (partly). The meteorological
input to the system is the ALADIN output, ALADIN being the national numerical
weather forecast tool. In this stage, the emission input exploits the TNO/UBA emission
inventory with tendency to make use of local data. The boundary conditions are
prepared by a similar system running operationally in Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki, Greece (AUTH). Special interface is created to retrieve in real time the
AUTH-system forecasts producing boundary files uploaded to dedicated server in
Bulgaria.

In the presentation, detailed description of the System’s structure will be given together
with first results of its testing.

Keywords: Chemical weather, Chemical weather forecast system, Prognosis of pollution levels