BACCHUS (Belgium and Canada for Chemical weather User-oriented Services)

The goal is to develop, in collaboration with Environment Canada and the Royal Meteorological Institute, an operational system to forecast atmospheric chemical composition and radiation. These objectives are application-oriented:

1. Deliver chemical analyses/forecasts with errors
2. Deliver long-term forecasts (up to 1 month in advance) of the depth and coverage of the ozone hole
3. Deliver Boundary Conditions for regional Air Quality forecasts
4. Monitoring and direct assimilation of satellite instruments measuring the atmospheric composition in the UV-visible range

 

Examples of domains and grids used by the GEM atmospheric model

 

This research explores the potential benefits from different integration strategies between dynamics and physics, such as tighter coupling between the models and different assimilation algorithms for the assimilation of chemical observations. It is based on GEM-BACH, the extension to stratospheric chemistry of the operational model developed by Environment Canada for weather prediction. GEM-BACH now runs also at IASB-BIRA.