The Earth Sciences Department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) is working on the development of a new chemical weather forecasting system based on the NCEP/NMMB multiscale meteorological model. In collaboration with the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NOAA/NCEP/EMC), the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA/GISS), and the University of California Irvine (UCI), the group is implementing aerosol and gas chemistry inlined within the NMMB model. The new modeling system, namely NMMB/BSC Chemical Transport Model (NMMB/BSC-CTM), is a powerful tool for research in physico-chemical processes occurring in the atmosphere and their interactions.
This talk will overview the status of development of the system, the efforts done on the evaluation of the different modules, and its application as a research forecast and on model intercomparison initiatives. NMMB/BSC-CTM is providing mineral dust forecasts with its regional configuration for the Northern Africa-Middle East-Europe (NA-ME-E) Node of the Sand and Dust Strom Warning Advisory and Assessment System (SDS-WAS) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Complementing the mineral dust processes, a multi-component aerosol module is under development. Results on the evaluation of different sea-salt emission schemes will be shown. Furthermore, gas and aerosol chemistry is under evaluation at both global and regional scales. In this sense, the NMMB/BSC-CTM is contributing to the AQMEII-Phase2 initiative on on-line air quality model intercomparison. Preliminary results of the system applied over the AQMEII-2 European domain will be discussed.