Miguel Ángel Alonso Rodríguez

On the Use of MRF/AVN Global Information to Improve the Operational Air Quality Model OPANA

Operational air quality models have become an important tool to assist the decision makers in European Environmental Offices at different levels: cities, regional and state. Because of the important advance on computing capabilities during the last few years the possibility of incorporating the complex research and academic mesoscale air quality models under routine operational basis has become a reality. OPANA model is the operational version of the research model ANA (Atmospheric mesoscale Numerical pollution model for regional and urban Areas). This model is a limited area model (mesoscale beta) and the capability to extend the prediction horizon is limited unless proper boundary conditions are provided during long simulations. In this contribution we show how AVN/MRF (NOAA) vertical numerical meteorological soundings are incorporated to the OPANA system by using JAVA technology. This new feature helps to keep the air quality model into medium power workstations and the performance is improved accordingly. This technology avoids running mesoscale models over larger areas (continental scale) to accordingly increase the forecasting temporal horizon.

EMMA model: an advanced operational mesoscale air quality model for urban and regional environments

Mesoscale air quality models are an important tool to forecast and analyse the air quality in regional and urban areas. In recent years an increased interest has been shown by decision makers in these types of software tools. The complexity of such a model has grown exponentially with the increase of computer power. Nowadays, medium workstations can run operational versions of these modelling systems successfully. Presents a complex mesoscale air quality model which has been installed in the Environmental Office of the Madrid community (Spain) in order to forecast accurately the ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide air concentrations in a 3D domain centred on Madrid city. Describes the challenging scientific matters to be solved in order to develop an operational version of the atmospheric mesoscale numerical pollution model for urban and regional areas (ANA). Some encouraging results have been achieved in the attempts to improve the accuracy of the predictions made by the version already installed.

Graphical Tools for an Epistemological Shift. The Contribution of Protoaxonometrical Drawing to the Development of Stonecutting Treatises

In this paper we analyze the graphical methods employed in the stonecutting treatises from that of De l’Orme, published during the sixteenth century, to De La Rue’s Traité de la coupe des pierres, published in 1728. We will deal with the graphical means that made possible an epistemological shift between treatises of the sixteenth century, written for practising stonecutting masons in a period where the subject was covered by a veil of secrecy, which in some specific cases included a very intuitive form of representation, “protoaxonometries”, and eighteenth-century treatises, which show a clear scientific and pedagogical approach to the geometrical problems posed by stonecutting.

ADVANCED OPERATIONAL AIR QUALITY FORECASTING MODELS FOR URBAN AND REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTS IN EUROPE: MADRID APPLICATION

During the last decades an increased interest on Air Quality Models has been found. Historically, air quality models have been developed in the 60’ and 70’ based on a very simplified solution of the Eulerian transport equation. The simplified differential transport equation had an analytical solution and therefore the results were obtained rapidly. Nowadays, these type of models (Gaussian) are applied with computer times very much reduced in comparison to the 60’ and 70’ operational models. These models have become quite complex by parameterizing new and more sophisticated problems such as buildings, very complex terrain, etc. However, because of the extraordinary advance of the computer power, during the 80’ a new generation of three-dimensional models started to be developed. During the 70’ the mathematical basis for solving the Navier-Stokes equation on the air fluid were established by developing sophisticated numerical techniques which conducted to have the first possible approaches for having a full three dimensional solution of the air dynamics. At the end of the 80’ decade the first models for mesoscale areas started to appear (MM5, MEMO, RAMS, etc.). (Pielke [5]; Flassak and Moussiopoulos [1]; Grell et al. [3]) These models offer a detailed diagnostic and prognostic patter of the wind, temperature and humidity -in addition of the pressure, vorticity, turbulent fluxes, etc.- in a three-dimensional mesoscale domain. The Gaussian approach was appropriate for point or lineal sources in a very local domain (5-10 km) but the rigid meteorological conditions and the difficulties of having on-line information to be incorporated to the model made almost impossible to apply these models for regional domains (20-500 km).