D E S C R I P T I O N O F W O R K - MEGAPOLI - Dmi

MEGAPOLI 212520
concentrates on enhancing the resolution of the emissions data and nesting the case study cities
accurately in the global database.
2) Regional Pan-European anthropogenic emission inventory :
Complete Pan-European emission inventories and high resolution emission maps of primary
anthropogenic pollutants at a resolution of about 6 x 6 km for the base year 2003 will be provided
as inputs to the regional modelling activities in WP 5 and 6. Relevant emission characteristics
important for improving the predictive capacity of the models will be improved and included where
possible.
3) Development of a baseline scenario:
Baseline scenario for the years 2020 and 2030 and a rough estimate for 2050 for Europe and for the
case study megacities (Paris, London, Rhine-Ruhr, Po Valley, Mexico City) will be provided as a
basis for the analysis of emission reduction measures and strategies in WP 8.
4) Case studies:
High quality and high resolution city inventories will be compiled, based on existing information to
the extent possible, and made available both as model input and a base for mitigation measures. The
underlying activity data tables will be “translated” and linked in the various databases in order to be
nested in a consistent way in the regional and global emission inventories.
5) European heat flux inventory:
To assess the impact of heat flux from megacities on local climate a European anthropogenic heat
flux inventory will be developed using the activity data and spatial distributions from task 2,
working with heat flux factors developed in cooperation with WP2.
6) Validation, evaluation and improvement of EI’s:
Task 1 and task 2 will start out with delivering a first working version of the desired inventories in
the first year of the project. The EI’s will be further improved through: 1) feedback from modellers
working with the EI’s; 2) A general review of regional source apportionment studies; 3) Validation
through measurement data and source apportionment within WP3 and WP4.
7) Processing of emission inventories for model sensitivity and scenario runs:
Emissions datasets will be provided for the sensitivity runs (WP5) and future scenario runs (WPs 5,
6 and 8). For the sensitivity runs, two types of emissions datasets will be provided: removing the
total megacity emissions from the dataset, and redistributing a fraction of the megacity emissions
into the surrounding regions.
WP2: Megacity Environments: Features, Processes and Effects
Overview and Background
Megacities are localized, heterogeneous and variable sources of the anthropogenic impact on air
quality and ultimately on climate. The major difficulty in megacity forcing in simulations arises
from the sub-grid scale features. They are typically unresolved in climate models and barely
resolved in regional scale models. Thus, models rely on parameterizations of megacity features
aggregated within the model grid cell. Aggregation is not straightforward given surface
heterogeneity and strong non-linearity of the turbulent transport in the urban atmospheric boundary
layer (UABL). The latter prohibits the application of direct averaging to obtain the large-scale
forcing. Albeit known since Schmidt (1921), the aggregation problems are still largely ignored in
existing urban parameterizations. A more sophisticated approach which accounts for emission at
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