Assimilating aerosol visible reflectances for improved air quality forecasts
Assimilation des réflectances visibles des aérosols pour de meilleures prévisions de la qualité de l'air
Quesada-Ruiz, Samuel ; Lupu, Cristina ; Necker, Tobias ; Ribas, Roberto ; Firat, Volkan ; Scheck, Leonhard ; Köpken-Watts, Christina ; Benedetti, Angela
Année de publication
2026
As a part of a collaboration with the German Meteorological Service (DWD), in addition to the efforts to monitor and assimilate cloud-sensitive visible data (Necker et al., 2025), ECMWF is also advancing the use of aerosol visible reflectance data. This work will enhance the initialisation of aerosol forecasts within the Integrated Forecasting System's (IFS) four-dimensional variational data assimilation (4D-Var) in the atmospheric composition configuration (IFS-COMPO), used operationally in the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). The aerosol visible reflectance assimilation system (AVRAS) prototype was developed under the CAMS EvOlution project (CAMEO) and followed the approach of Benedetti et al., 2020. This system currently leverages Level-2 cloud-screened aerosol visible reflectance observations from the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the Aqua and Terra satellites, which are already operationally received at ECMWF. Future work could extend to VIIRS or similar products developed for other imagers. The first assimilation experiment has been successfully conducted over several cycles, with promising preliminary results. This feature article summarises major findings from this exciting endeavour.</div>
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