Kiril Slavov

Grid computing for atmospheric composition studies in Bulgaria

Three Grid applications from the SEE-GRID-SCI Environmental VO are developed by the Bulgarian project team: Climate Change Impact on Air Quality (CCIAQ); Multi-scale atmospheric composition modeling (MSACM); Modeling System for Emergency Response to the Release of Harmful Substances in the Atmosphere (MSERRHSA). The three applications concern problems of significant socio-economic significance. They are all dedicated to air pollution studies, but address different goals and so face different problems and requirements. The applications are briefly presented in the paper. Examples of the different applications validations are given. Some application results are shown and commented.

Simulation of European air quality by WRF-CMAQ models using AQMEII-2 infrastructure

The air quality modeling system WRF-CMAQ was applied to the European domain for the year 2010 in the frame of the Air Quality Model Evaluation International Initiative (AQMEII), Phase 2. The model system was set up for a domain of 5000×5000?km2 size with horizontal resolution of 25km. The emissions at European level were available through AQMEII and further processed in a way to feed the chemistry transport model CMAQ. The meso-meteorological model WRF was driven by NCEP GFS data with 1?×1? resolution. The chemical boundary conditions were extracted from MACC global simulation data. Model performance was investigated by means of AQMEII-2 web based evaluation platform and the monitoring data gathered for this activity. A preliminary model evaluation for ozone, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter was conducted. The statistical analysis was based on comparison between simulated and observed concentrations at different type of surface stations in the EU wide domain (rural, urban, suburban), as well as for selected four cities. Model performance was characterized by overestimation for ozone and underestimation for the other pollutants. The relative statistical indicators were discussed also in view of recently published performance criteria. The model inter-comparison initiative AQMEII is outlined.The NIMHs WRF-CMAQ model system as designed for AQMEII-2 exercise is described.Simulations for 2010 over Europe as prepared for the ENSEMBLE tool are described.O3, NO2 and PM model results are analyzed against surface measurements in ENSEMBLE.

Bulgarian Emergency Response System: Description and Ensemble Performance

A PC-oriented Emergency Response System (BERS) is developed and works at the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology with the Bulgarian Academy of Science. The creation and the development of BERS were highly stimulated by ETEX (European Tracer Experiment).

Fine Resolution Modeling of Climate Change Impact on Future Air Quality Over BULGARIA

A meteorological database of high resolution (∼10 km) climate modeling results for three time slices – 1960–2000 (Control Run, CR), 2020–2050 (Near Future, NF) and 2070–2100 (Far Future, FF), produced by ALADIN-Climate model following the IPCC scenario A1B, future concentrations of many air pollutants are estimated. The dispersion calculations are made basically by US EPA Models-3 system (MM5, CMAQ, SMOKE). The mean concentrations of four main polluters (ozone ADM, SO2, NO2 and PM10) for the last 10 years of each time slice are calculated. The changes in pollution levels are presented and commented.

Snow Cover Assessment with Regional Climate Model - Problems and Results

Climate modelling, either global or regional, is usually treated as a typical large-scale scientific computational problem. The regional climate model RegCM, well-known within the meteorological community, is applied in the study to estimate quantitatively the snow water equivalent, which is the most consistent snow cover parameter. Multiple runs for a time window of 14 consecutive winters with different model configurations, in particular with various initial and boundary conditions, have been performed, in an attempt to obtain most adequate representation of the real snow cover. The results are compared with stations’ measurements from the network of the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology. Generally all runs yield similar results, where the overall (i.e. over the whole time span) biases are acceptable, but, however, with large discrepancies in the day-by-day comparisons, which is typical for climate modelling studies.

Assessment of the Air Quality in Bulgaria - Short Summary Based on Recent Modelling Results

The European Union has developed an extensive body of legislation which establishes health based standards and objectives for a number of pollutants in air. An appropriate method for evaluating the air quality of a certain EU-country is to contrast the actual air pollution levels to the critical ones, prescribed in the legislative standards. This study, which is part of greater one, is focused of the pollutants of most concern - the ground level ozone, particulate matter, and the sulphur dioxide, which is still a problem in Southeastern Europe. High-resolution data from the Bulgarian chemical weather forecasting and information system for the last three years are used to compute certain pollutant levels, which are further compared with the critical ones, prescribed in the EU-legislation directives. The obtained results can be treated as objective pattern of the situation over Bulgaria in the end of the first decade of the present century.

A Multy-Domain Operational Chemical Weather Forecast System

Lately, together with the numerical weather forecast, in many European countries Systems for Chemical Weather Forecast operate, Chemical Weather being understood as concentration distribution of key pollutants in a particular area and its changes during some forecast period. In Bulgaria, a prototype of such a system was built in the frame of a project with the National Science Fund. It covers a relatively small domain including Bulgaria that requires using chemical boundary conditions from similar foreign systems. As far as this data is prepared abroad and transferred by Internet, many failures took place during the operation of the system. To avoid this problem, a new version of the system was built on the base of the nesting approach. This version is realized on five domains: Europe, Balkan Peninsula, Bulgaria, Sofia-Region and Sofia-City with increasing space resolution - from 81 km (Europe) to 1 km (Sofia-City). For the Mother domain (Europe) climatic boundary conditions are applied. All other domains take there boundary conditions from the senior one. Computations start automatically at 00 UTC every day and the forecast period is 3 days. The System is based on the well known models WRF (Meso-meteorological Model) and US EPA dispersion model CMAQ (Chemical Transport Model). As emission input the TNO data is used for the two biggest domains. For the 3 Bulgarian domains the current emission inventory prepared by Bulgarian environmental authorities is exploited.

First results of SEE-GRID-SCI application CCIAQ

Intensive long-term meteorological modeling took place over an area covering Bulgaria with resolution of 10 km. The climatic version of the operational weather forecast model ALADIN was applied for simulating 3 time slices: 1960-2000, 2020-2050 and 2070-2100, following the IPCC scenario A1B. The differences of climatic fields for the 3 periods are presented and interpreted. The created met-data base is used to estimate the impact of climate changes on air quality, as well. A respective modeling System was created on the base of US EPA Models-3 tool (MM5, CMAQ and SMOKE). Calculations for the last 10 years of each time slice are performed. Grid technology in the frame of SEE-GRID-SCI project is used to perform this enormous volume of calculations as an application abbreviated to CCIAQ (Climate Change Impact on Air Quality). The results are presented and interpreted in the study.

Bulgarian operative system for chemical weather forecast

In the paper, an operational prototype of the Integrated Bulgarian Chemical Weather Forecasting and Information System is presented. The system is foreseen to provide in real time forecast of the spatial/temporal Air Quality behavior for the country and (with higher resolution) for selected sub-regions and cities. The country-scale part of the system has been designed and tested and is now running operationally. It is based on the US EPA Models-3 System (MM5, SMOKE and CMAQ). The meteorological input to the system is NIMHs operational numerical weather forecast. The emission input exploits a high resolution disaggregation of the EMEP 50×50 km inventory for the year 2003. When elaborated, the actual national emission inventory is foreseen to be used. The boundary conditions are prepared by a similar system running operationally at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. The System automatically runs twice a day (00 and 12 UTC) and produces 48-hour forecast. The results of each Systems run are post-processed in a way to archive the most important pollutants forecasts as to compare them with the respective measurements for the sake of verification of the System. Part of these pollutants is visualized as sequences of maps giving the evolution of the air quality over the country. The plots are uploaded to NIMHs web-server. The web-site is designed in a way to show both forecast maps for specified moments of time and animations for the entire 48-hour period for a number of key species.

Bulgarian Emergency Response System: Structure, Description, Performence

A PC-oriented Emergency Response System (BERS) is developed and works in the Bulgarian National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (NIMH). Creation and development of BERS was highly stimulated by the European project ETEX.