Global and local Air pollution transport over the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East

Abstract

Air quality is a very important issue in the Mediterranean basin, due to the strong urbanisation and industrialisation of the surrounding countries. Atmospheric chemistry models are used to assess and estimate the impact of natural and anthropogenic gas and aerosol emissions on air quality and climate change.
The region is not only influenced by local pollution (such as industry, traffic and ship emissions), but also by the transboundary transport of air pollution. To assess the impact of both processes on the atmospheric composition of the Mediterranean region, the model is required to perform global simulations at high spatial resolution. In addition, the complex chemical interactions of the aerosol components and their importance in the region entail the usage of a highly complex model which can cover different time and spatial scale processes. These requirements hence lead to the need of an extremely high demanding simulation in terms of computational power and data storage capability. The DEISA grid infrastructure offers an ideal environment to make such computation and analysis.
The proposed project aims in investigating the regional and global interactions between air pollution, long range transport and perturbations of the water cycle with a focus on the Mediterranean region and the Middle East. A high resolution simulation of an atmospheric chemistry climate model resolving complex aerosol processes will enable us to study the mechanism governing the Mediterranean weather and air quality.