A114-0002
Global Air quality Forecast and Information Systems (GAFIS) - a new WMO-GAW initiative
Friday, 11 December 2020
Poster
Johannes Flemming1, Richard Ménard2, Yang Zhang3, Martin Cope4, Christopher Gan5, Luisa T Molina6, Hong Wang7, K. Emma Knowland8, Virginie Marecal9, James H Crawford10, Zablon Weku Shilenje11, Stephan Nordmann12, Guy P Brasseur13, Jessica Seddon14, Carmichael Gregory15, Oksana A Tarasova16, Lu Ren16 and Alexander Baklanov17, (1)European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, United Kingdom, (2)Environment and Climate Change Canada, Air Quality Research Division, Montreal, QC, Canada, (3)Northeastern University, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Boston, United States, (4)CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Aspendale, Australia, (5)Meteorological Service Singapore, Singapore, Singapore, (6)Molina Center for Energy & Env, La Jolla, CA, United States, (7)Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, China, (8)Universities Space Research Association Columbia, Columbia, MD, United States, (9)Meteo France, Toulouse, France, (10)NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, United States, (11)Kenya Meteorological Department, Nairobi, Kenya, (12)UBA German Federal Environment Agency, Berlin, Germany, (13)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, United States, (14)World Resources Institute, Washington DC, United States, (15)University of Iowa, Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, Iowa City, IA, United States, (16)World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, (17)WMO, Genova, Switzerland
Abstract:
Air pollution is the single largest environmental risk factor to health globally; it contributes to climate change, is detrimental for ecosystems, damages property, impacts visibility and can threaten food and water security. A wide variety of Air Quality systems operate at different spatial and temporal scales to provide information required to mitigate the impact of or to reduce air pollution.
Recognising the importance to support the transition of scientific efforts into useful services, the Global Atmosphere Watch Programme (GAW) of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has started an initiative on Global Air quality Forecast and Information Systems (GAFIS). GAFIS aims to become a network for the development of good practices for air quality forecasting and monitoring services using diverse approaches. GAFIS will closely interact with existing efforts in WMO-GAW and the wider scientific community on air pollution, dust storm and wild fire plume forecasting.
The scope of GAFIS is structured into the topics areas: (a) Capacity Development, (b) Good Practises (and challenges) of Air Quality Forecasting and Information System, (c) Air Quality Observations and (d) Air Quality and Numerical Weather Prediction. As a major first step, GAFIS carried out a survey of AQ information systems. GAFIS aims to improve access to air quality observations and to support better quality control and meta-data provision. GAFIS will promote coordinated evaluation activities of air quality services using a harmonized evaluation protocol. Encouraging operational applications of atmospheric composition forecasting as part of Numerical Weather Prediction is a further objective of GAFIS.
In the presentation we will introduce GAFIS to the scientific community and invite collaboration within the GAFIS framework.
