Environmental / Air Quality Modeling

Various statistical-dynamical models are used to simulate the dispersion, transport and chemistry of the atmospheric pollutants based on local weather conditions. These models play important role in Air Quality Management and are useful for simulating the impacts of future development/control measures.

Air Quality Modeling

GIS Based Emission Inventory

The CES group in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune and the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), New Delhi has developed a methodology for conversion of large scale emission inventories to gridded/ model-ready format over Indian region using GIS as a tool. Currently, national level inventories for Carbon monoxide (CO) and Nitrogen Oxides (NOx), being developed by researchers at NPL have been used as case studies. The CO & NOx inventories for year 1991 & 2001 have been gridded to 10 X 10 scale as an example. The results, thus obtained will be useful for better prediction of air quality for the Indian region hotspots.

AERMOD

An integrated air quality modeling system is developed to study the dispersion of particular matter, being one of the important causes of health damage and mortality especially in the Asian countries. This study is under the “Clean Air Initiative Program” implemented in the city of Pune, India jointly by US environmental Protection Agency - Ministry of environment and Forests, India, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) and other local stakeholders. A coupler has developed to drive air dispersion models using mesoscale model outputs (WRF-AERMOD, WRF-CALPUFF). A Graphical User Interface is developed for USEPA's AERMOD Air Quality Model on Linux platform. It aids in setting up, executing and post-processing Air Pollution simulations using AERMOD model

Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling

• CES group is participating in various national and international initiatives for atmospheric chemistry research:
• Development of an 'Offline' version of WRF/Chemistry model in collaboration with ClRES/NOAA, USA.
• Collaborative projects with IIT Bombay, Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad and University of Iowa, USA for aerosol research and modeling over Indian region. Indian region using WRF-STEM model.
• Development of a GIS based technique to develop high resolution emissions database for input to atmospheric chemistry models.
• Development of a Parallel General Circulation Model: LMD-ZT Offline for the study of global climate change, in collaboration with IIT Bombay and LMD, France.