Air Quality Forecast
Forecast for the next 48 hours for the Iberian Peninsula, Catalonia and the city of Barcelona.
Empowering citizens, air quality managers, and technical users by monitoring and predicting the evolution of the main air pollutants that affect the quality of the air that we breathe
Forecast for the next 48 hours for the Iberian Peninsula, Catalonia and the city of Barcelona.
Updated 07:30 UTC on Sun 29 Dec 2024
CALIOPE is the air quality forecasting system developed by the Earth Sciences Department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS).
Thanks to the large computational resources of the BSC MareNostrum supercomputer, CALIOPE offers air quality forecasts for the Iberian Peninsula, Catalonia and the city of Barcelona.
CALIOPE is the air quality forecasting system developed by the Earth Sciences Department at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).
Air quality observations are real measurements of the concentration of pollutants in the air obtained from a monitoring instrument. Depending on how far from the instrument's emission sources these measurements are, they display the air pollution over a more or less extended area. For instance, instruments located very close to a trafficked street in the city are called “urban traffic stations” and provide information on the very local air pollution, which may be strongly affected by vehicle exhausts. Conversely, instruments located further away from direct pollution emission sources, for example, in large urban public parks, are called “urban background stations” and provide information on the air pollution affecting the surrounding neighbourhood.
Official air quality monitoring stations have high installation and maintenance costs; hence, only a limited number of them focus on a few harmful chemical species that can be deployed in cities. This means that air quality observations in urban areas are quite dispersed.
Nevertheless, to provide more thorough information on air pollution, scientists rely on air quality modelling systems that mathematically simulate how pollutants disperse in the air. Such modelling systems can be used to generate air quality forecasts.
Air quality forecasts are predictions of the future concentrations of air pollutants expected over the coming days in a specific region. Forecasts are obtained by running air quality modelling systems that use estimations of expected pollutant emissions and meteorological forecasts. In the CALIOPE forecasting system, air quality forecasts are typically calculated hourly for large geographical areas using a spatial resolution of one to a few kilometres. This is why, to be computed, air quality forecasts require huge computational resources.
To produce air quality forecasts, the CALIOPE modelling system uses and combines different models to estimate anthropogenic and biogenic emissions, as well as atmospheric and weather conditions:
The Multiscale Online Nonhydrostatic AtmospheRe CHemistry model (MONARCH) is an advanced chemistry and aerosol modelling system representing the atmospheric chemistry cycle, including emission, transport, and deposition along with aerosol–radiation interactions. The dust component simulates and predicts the dust cycle in the atmosphere with the aim of estimating desert dust's contribution to aerosol diffusion. The BSC-CNS supports and maintains the model and provides operational dust forecasts for the World Meteorological Organization Barcelona Dust Regional Center. Since September 2023, MONARCHv2.0 dust forecasts have replaced the previous BSC-DREAM system to represent the dust component in the CALIOPE system.
Note:
For its regional calculations, CALIOPE is initialised using global meteorological data from the Global Forecasting System (GFS) model of the National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), while boundary conditions for pollutants and aerosols come from the CAMS Global atmospheric composition forecast, operated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).
To assess the quality of the results, CALIOPE forecasts are compared with the observed air quality measures obtained by monitoring instruments in the region of interest. For this comparison, the system uses observed data from the European Environment Information and Observation Network (EIONET), which is managed by the European Environment Agency (EEA).
CALIOPE forecasts’ numerical datasets are not available to download from the website. The provision of numerical data or any other type of query that involves adapting our products to the specific needs of users can be accommodated under collaborations in the framework of working contracts or scientific projects. Should you need further information, please contact us through the contact form.
"Images/air quality forecasts are provided by the CALIOPE air quality forecasting system from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS).”
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Technical information about the CALIOPE modelling system can be found in the publications list.
This initiative has been powered by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) and the Generalitat de Catalunya.
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