Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry Group (APCG)

 

Research Topic

Inverse modelling

Quantifying the budgets of atmospheric constituents is essential for understanding their current concentrations and predicting their future evolution. Within the APCG we concentrate on the use of inverse modelling techniques to quantify emissions of e.g. CO, CH4, and CO2.

The amount as well as the quality of satellite data regarding atmospheric composition increased over the past decades. Therefore, the detection and quantification of increasingly smaller sources and of an increasing number of species is becoming possible. The satellite data, combined with surface and aircraft data, are used to constrain the emissions such that a best fit between model results and observations is obtained.

We use the TM5 transport model, and its adjoint, in a 4DVAR modelling framework to study large-scale budgets of greenhouse gases and pollutants. The TM5 model has the capability to zoom in over larger regions of interest (e.g. Europe). Further, we use the WRF-Chem model for modelling at higher resolution, making it possible to look at sources as small as cities.