Final Report Summary - MACC (Monitoring atmospheric composition and climate)
The MACC project was designed to meet the requirements that were expressed by the European Commission for what at the time was termed by the Commission to be the pilot Global monitoring of environment and security (GMES) atmospheric core service. The project was prepared by the consortia of the earlier European Union's Sixth Framework Programme project GEMS and the European Space Agency (ESA) GMES service element project Promote, whose core service lines provided the starting point for MACC.
From June 2009 until December 2011 MACC continued, improved, extended, integrated and validated these service lines, with the primary objective that the overall MACC system would be ready by the end of 2011 for qualification as what was termed the operational GMES atmosphere monitoring service. MACC prepared this core service in terms of implementation, sustained operation and availability. It maintained and further developed the efficiency and resilience of the end to end pre-operational systems initiated in GEMS and Promote and refined the scientific basis and quality of the products of the systems. It sought to determine and ensure that its service lines best met both the requirements of downstream service providers and end users at the European, national and local levels and the requirements of the global scientific user community. The service lines covered air quality, climate forcing, stratospheric ozone and solar radiation. MACC delivered products and information of the type needed to support the establishment and implementation of European policy and wider international programmes. It acquired and assimilated observational data to provide sustained near real time and retrospective global monitoring of greenhouse gases, aerosols and reactive gases such as tropospheric ozone and nitrogen dioxide. It provided daily global forecasts of atmospheric composition, detailed air quality forecasts and assessments for Europe and key information on long range transport of atmospheric pollutants. It provided comprehensive web based graphical products and gridded data on which downstream services could be based. Feedback was given to space agencies and providers of in situ data on the quality of their data and on future observational requirements.
It became clear during the early stages of MACC that it was unlikely that there would be initial GMES operational funding for an atmospheric service that would immediately succeed MACC and that continuation of MACC's activities would be most likely through a new European Union's Seventh Framework Programme project. This indeed turned out to be the case and a successor project, MACC-II, operated by a consortium largely similar in composition to the consortium operating MACC, commenced on 1 November 2011. The principal exploitation of the developments made during MACC was accordingly made in MACC-II, which continued operation of the service lines provided by MACC.
The MACC project was established to provide the pilot for the operational core GMES atmosphere monitoring service. It built on the systems and prototype pre-operational services developed in the Sixth Framework Project GEMS, sustaining, improving and expanding the services and incorporating core elements of the ESA funded GMES service element project Promote. In addition to continuing a number of service lines provided by Promote, MACC drew on the tested mechanisms and practices for user involvement developed and implemented in that project.
The objectives of MACC were to:
1. continue operation of the near real time global and regional production systems established in GEMS and Promote, including merging of activities in the case of the regional air quality forecasting
2. establish, maintain and refine a web system presenting the project and its documentary, graphical and data products utilising both central and distributed hosting
3. continue and expand the acquisition and pre-processing of the input data needed by the project
4. undertake additional activities related to observational data, including arranging for acquisition of near real time air quality data via the European Environment Agency (EEA) rather than through existing bilateral arrangements, providing a limited set of satellite data retrievals and general liaising with data providers to communicate the future needs of successor activities for observations and retrievals
5. derive and assess datasets on emissions for use in the project, including further development of the daily analysis of the emissions from fires
6. set up and operate a delayed mode global production stream running about six months behind real time, in particular to support the routine production of improved estimates of surface fluxes of greenhouse gases and in due course aerosols
7. extend the global GEMS reanalysis to 2009 and then carry out a new MACC reanalysis for the period from 2003 to 2010
8. support access to and use of both this new MACC reanalysis and the earlier GEMS reanalysis as extended during the first period of MACC
9. refine the global data assimilation and modelling, including work on incorporating a new aerosol model and including chemistry modules directly within the integrated forecasting system (IFS) of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, rather than via coupling of the IFS to external chemical transport models
10. implement and improve data assimilation for the regional forecasting systems, including application in reanalysis for the purpose of assessment of European air quality
11. develop service lines for the support of the solar energy and policy sectors
12. establish and operate a user interface and execute and assess service chain test cases
13. assess and meet user needs for training
14. manage the project effectively, responding to needs for external communication and developing service standards and documentation
15. contribute to the planning for eventual implementation of the operational GMES atmosphere monitoring service, including the planning needed to ensure an effective hand over to the interim project MACC-II.
MACC provided sets of graphical, data and documentary products that emanated from:
1. global service lines providing monitoring of key aspects of climate, climate forcing and sources and sinks of key species, monitoring and forecasting of stratospheric ozone and ultraviolet (UV) radiation, forecasts of reactive gases and aerosols and boundary conditions for regional models
2. European service lines providing air quality forecasts from an ensemble of high resolution regional systems, air quality assessments based on retrospective running of the regional systems using validated observational data and solar energy resource assessment.
3. Service lines for policy development, including establishment of effective dialogue with the EEA, national and regional environment agencies and European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP), so that MACC could begin to shape its programme and successor activities to support their work. Activities included agreements on data exchanges, sensitivity studies to prepare scenarios to be run on demand in unusual or emergency situations, sensitivity studies to take better account of the effects of large cities in such scenarios and development of adjoint methods for chemistry and transport components of models to provide a new approach to documenting source and receptor relations in Europe.
In addition to this provision of data and information with potential impacts on sectors such as health, energy and transport and on the setting and implementation of policy related to them, MACC had impact through its international contributions to a number of initiatives and programmes. Particular activities included:
1. contribution of forecasts for use in the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) sand and dust storm advisory warning system for northern Africa, Middle East and Europe
2. supply of boundary conditions for the AQMEII coordinated evaluation of regional air quality modelling, which entailed comparisons of European and north American regional model performance over the two continents
3. supply of boundary conditions to the WMO GURME project, which established regional air quality systems for the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games and Shanghai World Expo
4. provision of near real time forecasts of carbon monoxide, ozone and aerosol to the American HIPPO observational programme, which measured cross sections of a comprehensive suite of atmospheric trace gases approximately pole to pole, from the surface to the tropopause, five times during different seasons over a three year period
5. participation in the international Aerocom project comparing aerosol observations and models.
More generally, the project provided data and capacity for modelling, reanalysis and surface-flux estimation that over the course of time should help reduce uncertainties in the drivers of climate change as identified in the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and contribute to the improvement of the models used to make projections of future climate. It supported the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) through provision of datasets on a number of the essential climate variables identified by the global climate observing system (GCOS) and more generally through contributing to the implementation of a number of actions, both general and specific identified by GCOS as required to provide observational support for the UNFCCC. MACC linked with work carried out under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) convention on long range transboundary air pollution and the convention's task forces on measurement and modelling and hemispheric transport of air pollution. MACC's work on the analysis of stratospheric ozone contributed to the assessment of the effectiveness of the Montreal protocol on ozone depleting substances, under the Vienna convention for the protection of the ozone layer. The data products and development activities of MACC also contributed to international research programmes, the world climate research programme (WCRP) and the international geosphere biosphere programme (IGBP) in particular, and to meeting the GEOSS strategic targets, particularly for the climate and energy societal benefit areas.
Dissemination activities covered both the dissemination of MACC products to users and the dissemination of information on the project. Dissemination of products was largely through MACC's web services, although arrangements for supply of data via ftp were established and would be developed further in MACC-II. The project website also provided access to many of the documents produced by the project.
MACC was represented in the GMES project communications meetings hosted by the European Commission. Among the actions resulting from these meetings, material on MACC was prepared and presented on the European exhibition stands at the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Ministerial Plenary meetings held in Beijing and Istanbul in November 2010 and 2011 respectively. Verbal presentations on MACC were also given on these occasions. MACC was also represented at the national GMES user forums held in France and Germany during the reporting period and at a joint European Union and United States of America workshop on space and climate in March 2011. Other European events within the reporting period where presentations were made included the Eumetsat Meteorological Satellite Conference in September 2010, the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly in April 2011 and the Seventh Framework Programme Space Conference in May 2011. MACC was presented at a number of international conferences, workshops and seminars. It was also presented or represented at various meetings held under the auspices of the GCOS, the WCRP and the WMO. Material from MACC was included in a presentation at a side event on climate observation held in association with the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) 16 in Cancún in November 2010.
The purpose of MACC was to provide its foreground in the form of data and information for others to use, whether they would be downstream service providers or end users. MACC also generated foreground in the form of its production systems and supporting codes. In this case the principal intended use of this foreground was in the project MACC-II which commenced on 1 November 2011. MACC-II would ensure continuity of operation and further development of the services provided by MACC until July 2014. This should be followed by ongoing use of foreground to provide full GMES operations for atmospheric monitoring, something envisaged for 2012 when MACC was established. Nevertheless, as 2012 began, how foreground would be deployed in the longer term remained uncertain.
Further information about the project could be obtained at http://www.gmes-atmosphere.eu(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie).
From June 2009 until December 2011 MACC continued, improved, extended, integrated and validated these service lines, with the primary objective that the overall MACC system would be ready by the end of 2011 for qualification as what was termed the operational GMES atmosphere monitoring service. MACC prepared this core service in terms of implementation, sustained operation and availability. It maintained and further developed the efficiency and resilience of the end to end pre-operational systems initiated in GEMS and Promote and refined the scientific basis and quality of the products of the systems. It sought to determine and ensure that its service lines best met both the requirements of downstream service providers and end users at the European, national and local levels and the requirements of the global scientific user community. The service lines covered air quality, climate forcing, stratospheric ozone and solar radiation. MACC delivered products and information of the type needed to support the establishment and implementation of European policy and wider international programmes. It acquired and assimilated observational data to provide sustained near real time and retrospective global monitoring of greenhouse gases, aerosols and reactive gases such as tropospheric ozone and nitrogen dioxide. It provided daily global forecasts of atmospheric composition, detailed air quality forecasts and assessments for Europe and key information on long range transport of atmospheric pollutants. It provided comprehensive web based graphical products and gridded data on which downstream services could be based. Feedback was given to space agencies and providers of in situ data on the quality of their data and on future observational requirements.
It became clear during the early stages of MACC that it was unlikely that there would be initial GMES operational funding for an atmospheric service that would immediately succeed MACC and that continuation of MACC's activities would be most likely through a new European Union's Seventh Framework Programme project. This indeed turned out to be the case and a successor project, MACC-II, operated by a consortium largely similar in composition to the consortium operating MACC, commenced on 1 November 2011. The principal exploitation of the developments made during MACC was accordingly made in MACC-II, which continued operation of the service lines provided by MACC.
The MACC project was established to provide the pilot for the operational core GMES atmosphere monitoring service. It built on the systems and prototype pre-operational services developed in the Sixth Framework Project GEMS, sustaining, improving and expanding the services and incorporating core elements of the ESA funded GMES service element project Promote. In addition to continuing a number of service lines provided by Promote, MACC drew on the tested mechanisms and practices for user involvement developed and implemented in that project.
The objectives of MACC were to:
1. continue operation of the near real time global and regional production systems established in GEMS and Promote, including merging of activities in the case of the regional air quality forecasting
2. establish, maintain and refine a web system presenting the project and its documentary, graphical and data products utilising both central and distributed hosting
3. continue and expand the acquisition and pre-processing of the input data needed by the project
4. undertake additional activities related to observational data, including arranging for acquisition of near real time air quality data via the European Environment Agency (EEA) rather than through existing bilateral arrangements, providing a limited set of satellite data retrievals and general liaising with data providers to communicate the future needs of successor activities for observations and retrievals
5. derive and assess datasets on emissions for use in the project, including further development of the daily analysis of the emissions from fires
6. set up and operate a delayed mode global production stream running about six months behind real time, in particular to support the routine production of improved estimates of surface fluxes of greenhouse gases and in due course aerosols
7. extend the global GEMS reanalysis to 2009 and then carry out a new MACC reanalysis for the period from 2003 to 2010
8. support access to and use of both this new MACC reanalysis and the earlier GEMS reanalysis as extended during the first period of MACC
9. refine the global data assimilation and modelling, including work on incorporating a new aerosol model and including chemistry modules directly within the integrated forecasting system (IFS) of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, rather than via coupling of the IFS to external chemical transport models
10. implement and improve data assimilation for the regional forecasting systems, including application in reanalysis for the purpose of assessment of European air quality
11. develop service lines for the support of the solar energy and policy sectors
12. establish and operate a user interface and execute and assess service chain test cases
13. assess and meet user needs for training
14. manage the project effectively, responding to needs for external communication and developing service standards and documentation
15. contribute to the planning for eventual implementation of the operational GMES atmosphere monitoring service, including the planning needed to ensure an effective hand over to the interim project MACC-II.
MACC provided sets of graphical, data and documentary products that emanated from:
1. global service lines providing monitoring of key aspects of climate, climate forcing and sources and sinks of key species, monitoring and forecasting of stratospheric ozone and ultraviolet (UV) radiation, forecasts of reactive gases and aerosols and boundary conditions for regional models
2. European service lines providing air quality forecasts from an ensemble of high resolution regional systems, air quality assessments based on retrospective running of the regional systems using validated observational data and solar energy resource assessment.
3. Service lines for policy development, including establishment of effective dialogue with the EEA, national and regional environment agencies and European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP), so that MACC could begin to shape its programme and successor activities to support their work. Activities included agreements on data exchanges, sensitivity studies to prepare scenarios to be run on demand in unusual or emergency situations, sensitivity studies to take better account of the effects of large cities in such scenarios and development of adjoint methods for chemistry and transport components of models to provide a new approach to documenting source and receptor relations in Europe.
In addition to this provision of data and information with potential impacts on sectors such as health, energy and transport and on the setting and implementation of policy related to them, MACC had impact through its international contributions to a number of initiatives and programmes. Particular activities included:
1. contribution of forecasts for use in the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) sand and dust storm advisory warning system for northern Africa, Middle East and Europe
2. supply of boundary conditions for the AQMEII coordinated evaluation of regional air quality modelling, which entailed comparisons of European and north American regional model performance over the two continents
3. supply of boundary conditions to the WMO GURME project, which established regional air quality systems for the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games and Shanghai World Expo
4. provision of near real time forecasts of carbon monoxide, ozone and aerosol to the American HIPPO observational programme, which measured cross sections of a comprehensive suite of atmospheric trace gases approximately pole to pole, from the surface to the tropopause, five times during different seasons over a three year period
5. participation in the international Aerocom project comparing aerosol observations and models.
More generally, the project provided data and capacity for modelling, reanalysis and surface-flux estimation that over the course of time should help reduce uncertainties in the drivers of climate change as identified in the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and contribute to the improvement of the models used to make projections of future climate. It supported the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) through provision of datasets on a number of the essential climate variables identified by the global climate observing system (GCOS) and more generally through contributing to the implementation of a number of actions, both general and specific identified by GCOS as required to provide observational support for the UNFCCC. MACC linked with work carried out under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) convention on long range transboundary air pollution and the convention's task forces on measurement and modelling and hemispheric transport of air pollution. MACC's work on the analysis of stratospheric ozone contributed to the assessment of the effectiveness of the Montreal protocol on ozone depleting substances, under the Vienna convention for the protection of the ozone layer. The data products and development activities of MACC also contributed to international research programmes, the world climate research programme (WCRP) and the international geosphere biosphere programme (IGBP) in particular, and to meeting the GEOSS strategic targets, particularly for the climate and energy societal benefit areas.
Dissemination activities covered both the dissemination of MACC products to users and the dissemination of information on the project. Dissemination of products was largely through MACC's web services, although arrangements for supply of data via ftp were established and would be developed further in MACC-II. The project website also provided access to many of the documents produced by the project.
MACC was represented in the GMES project communications meetings hosted by the European Commission. Among the actions resulting from these meetings, material on MACC was prepared and presented on the European exhibition stands at the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Ministerial Plenary meetings held in Beijing and Istanbul in November 2010 and 2011 respectively. Verbal presentations on MACC were also given on these occasions. MACC was also represented at the national GMES user forums held in France and Germany during the reporting period and at a joint European Union and United States of America workshop on space and climate in March 2011. Other European events within the reporting period where presentations were made included the Eumetsat Meteorological Satellite Conference in September 2010, the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly in April 2011 and the Seventh Framework Programme Space Conference in May 2011. MACC was presented at a number of international conferences, workshops and seminars. It was also presented or represented at various meetings held under the auspices of the GCOS, the WCRP and the WMO. Material from MACC was included in a presentation at a side event on climate observation held in association with the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) 16 in Cancún in November 2010.
The purpose of MACC was to provide its foreground in the form of data and information for others to use, whether they would be downstream service providers or end users. MACC also generated foreground in the form of its production systems and supporting codes. In this case the principal intended use of this foreground was in the project MACC-II which commenced on 1 November 2011. MACC-II would ensure continuity of operation and further development of the services provided by MACC until July 2014. This should be followed by ongoing use of foreground to provide full GMES operations for atmospheric monitoring, something envisaged for 2012 when MACC was established. Nevertheless, as 2012 began, how foreground would be deployed in the longer term remained uncertain.
Further information about the project could be obtained at http://www.gmes-atmosphere.eu(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie).