Predicting air quality: Current status and future directions

Abstract

Air quality prediction plays an important role in the management of our environment. As more atmospheric chemical observations become available chemical data assimilation is expected to play an essential role in air quality forecasting. In this paper the current status of air quality forecasting is discussed and illustrated by comparison of predictions with observations. The future directions are also discussed, with an emphasis on data assimilation. Applications of the four dimensional variational method (4D-Var) and the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) approach are presented and discussed.