Partner 20 MET.NO: The Norwegian Meteorological Institute

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute (met.no) has well-recognized competence in the modelling of emissions fluxes, atmospheric transport, deposition processes and chemical transformation in the troposphere through international projects on the long-range transmission of pollution. Since 1979, MET.NO hosts the Meteorological Synthesizing Centre - West (MSC-W) for the Co-operative Programme for Monitoring and Evaluation of the Long Range Transmission of Air Pollutants in Europe (EMEP). EMEP modelling at MSC-W has supported policy work within both the UN-ECE and EU frameworks throughout this period, both through direct model calculations and scenario analysis and through the production of source-receptor matrices, which are used as input to integrated assessment models such as ECOSENSE and IIASA-RAINS model. Modelling activities within EMEP have traditionally used Lagrangian (150x150 km²) models, but current activities focus on application and development of the Eulerian (20 layers, 50x50km²) for acid deposition, ground level ozone and aerosol models for Europe in a form that allows hemispheric model simulations and simulations at regional mesoscale. An additional advantage of the air quality modelling under EMEP is that it has direct access to verified meteorological data. MET.NO has official national responsibility for the meteorological services in Norway and adjacent seas. The institute has 450 employees distributed in three regional centres, 14 weather offices and three meteorological stations in the Arctic. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute has long experience in atmospheric modelling both for forecast and hindcast purposes. At present, Met.NO uses operationally the HIRLAM model (High Resolution Limited Area Model) and has actively participated in the scientific development of the model since its beginning in 1985. A version of HIRLAM has also been developed for routine output of meteorological data for the EMEP air pollution modelling systems. This version is run in a post-processing mode four times per day to allow best possible assimilation of observational data as is used to generate verified meteorological data for input to the air pollution models. MET.NO’s expertise on numerical weather forecasting supports the development of air dispersion modelling and provides first hand information on the validation of input meteorological data for air pollution purposes.

Dr. Leonor Tarrason is head of the air pollution section at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and project leader of EMEP/MSC_W since 1998. She has twelve years experience in modelling the long-range atmospheric transport of acidifying pollutants including two years modelling experience at numerical weather prediction section at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. She is member of the Technical Analysis Group under the CAFÉ programme and member of the Steering Committee of the CITY DELTA, where the links between regional and urban air pollution with relevance for integrated assessment modelling are investigated. During her period as project leader of EMEP she has participated in numerous EU projects to support the design of control strategies under the CAFÉ programme (MERLIN, NONLIN, BASELINE) and she has coordinated development, implementation and verification of aerosol dynamics in the EMEP model under the Nordic Council of Ministers and is presently project coordinator for the development of Eulerian Atmospheric dispersion models to link hemispheric, regional and local air pollution problems” in cooperation with the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU).

Dr. David Simpsonbegan work in 1982 at Warren Spring Laboratory (now part of NETCEN) on the development of dispersion models for sulphur and nitrogen, analysis of NO₂ episodes in London, and on ozone modelling. He has been working at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (MET.NO) since 1990, where he further developed the EMEP MSC-W Lagrangian oxidant model. This model has been applied extensively to look at emission control strategies on the European scale, mainly for UN-ECE but also for DG XI. During 1996-1997 he has also developed an iterative method for looking at optimisations of multi-pollutant multi-effect problems. He began working with the EMEP 3-D oxidant model in 1998 improving the emission routines and working on a new deposition module to calculate fluxes of ozone and other gases to vegetation. He has also worked extensively with biogenic VOC emissions, chemistry and recently secondary organic aerosol formation. He is currently coordinating activities to unify the ozone, acidification and aerosol 3-D models in use at MET.NO. He has participated in numerous EU-projects (INFOS, Extern-E, TROTREP, MERLIN, CARBOSOL, NOFRETETE) and was responsible of MSC-W work for DGXI concerning the acidification and ozone strategy, and the development of the National Emissions Ceilings Directive. David Simpson was the coordinator of the Auto/Oil I project on local/regional scale photochemical oxidant modelling.