Stratospheric Modelling & Chemical Weather

We contribute to the development of the ECMWF IFS model for the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) by implementing and developing the stratospheric chemistry module which was originally developed for BASCOE. This allows CAMS to provide forecasts - and eventually analyses - of the chemical compounds which cause ozone depletion in the stratosphere, and enables a better monitoring of the ozone layer.

 IFS BASCOE illustration for press release v4 EN

The first succesful implementation was described by

On 27 June 2023, an updated implementation (IFS Cycle 48R1) became operational to generate the CAMS near-real time analyses and short-term forecasts. This achievement is explained in more detail in a press release. The model implementation was described and validated by

  • Eskes, H., Tsikerdekis, A., Ades, M., Alexe, M., Benedictow, A. C., Bennouna, Y., Blake, L., Bouarar, I., Chabrillat, S., Engelen, R., Errera, Q., Flemming, J., Garrigues, S., Griesfeller, J., Huijnen, V., Ilić, L., Inness, A., Kapsomenakis, J., Kipling, Z., … Peuch, V.-H. (2024). Technical note: Evaluation of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service Cy48R1 upgrade of June 2023. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 24(16), 9475-9514. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-9475-2024 (Belgian institutional Open Access repository for Federal Science)

The latest developments include:

This work is currently done under contract CAMS2_35 (2021-2024). This first contract for initial implementation was CAMS_42 (2016-2021).

Currently contributing scientists are Simon Chabrillat, Daniele Minganti and Christine Bingen in BIRA-IASB team D34.