minutes of the cams user workshop - copernicus atmosphere … · 2017-10-01 · copernicus...

ECMWF COPERNICUS NOTE

Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service

Minutes of the CAMS User Workshop

Bilthoven, 13 June 2017

Issued by: DLR / Thomas Popp

Date: 29/09/2017

Ref: CAMS94_2015SC2_201707_Minutes_Bilthoven_v2


CAMS94_2015SC2 – Minutes Bilthoven workshop of 16

1 Agenda



2 Participants



3 Summary of discussions This workshop targeted the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) in a 1-day meeting. The workshop was co-organized and led by RIVM (Daan Swart), NSO (Jennifer Grant) and CAMS User Interaction (Thomas Popp, DLR) and held in a hybrid of English and Dutch (Dutch was offered to lower any barriers for user feedback, but in the end was only little used for 2 presentations and for some of the answer cards ). The workshop had 47 participants with a good mix of new / potential / experienced users. All presentations will be available on the CAMS website http://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/events/cams-user-workshop-bilthoven. Block 1 – CAMS overview With three presentations an overview of CAMS functionalities and the product portfolio, of support offered to users and of continuous user interaction was given by Richard Engelen, Stijn Vermote and Thomas Popp. In the discussion people expressed positive surprise to see what CAMS is able to deliver, including from an SME and a university. Some did not seem to make the link with MACC. This means that in terms of communication there is still a large potential to further increase awareness in the CAMS traditional service markets. Based on several comments, it became clear that the CAMS website can be further improved (e.g. some documents are too hidden, need for better visibility of the service and product specifications document, the website should invite and stimulate interested parties to dig deeper, the descriptive part of each product in the catalogue should be further elaborated). Downscaling at city level remains a point of attention to bridge the gap between CAMS products and potential applications. Who can do this, which techniques? By design it is not CAMS’ role but as this is a reoccurring question ECMWF should consider this as a FAQ. ECMWF can include a short description on the what, how, why aspects of downscaling in the Knowledge Base of the User Support website, including an explanation that it is not part of CAMS service delivery (for the moment). Block 2 – Show cases using CAMS The national organizing team of the workshop had selected a set of experienced show cases of CAMS usage from a larger set of possible topics. Those were presented in a series of short talks. AIR-Portal (S&T) presented a feasibility study with a dashboard on air quality for both cities and citizens based on CAMS input combined with a downscaling model, GIS, ground measurements and traffic data. Demonstration projects are in Amsterdam, Athens, ongoing discussions with Rotterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven.

http://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/events/cams-user-workshop-bilthoven



RIVM Operational AQ Maps presented their operational public information for air quality (2-day forecasts of O3, PM10, NOX) within the respective EU Directive. It started in 2015, using LOTOS-EUROS and HIRLAM wind fields with detailed calculations around highways. The system provides 125 m resolution using on the fly calibration with measurements; boundary conditions are taken from one of the CAMS regional models and the CAMS regional ensemble will be tested. Future plans are for higher resolution and fusion / assimilation of cheap sensor data Source-receptor calculations under episodes in main European City Areas (TNO) assesses issues of the type “Which country pollutes my city?” Starting with CAMS boundary conditions, emissions and fire data, it demonstrates for the first time such analysis data on demand using two models (LOTOS-EUROS, EMEP) and two source apportionment techniques (labelling and ensemble). This allows to compare the sectoral and per-country source assignment results (relative fractions to become independent from absolute errors of the models), which increases service reliability. The service is ready to be activated approximately 5 times per year. It can be used for reporting of limit values exceedances, including natural contributions, transboundary contributions and for testing the design of mitigation measures. CAMS input for forest fire monitoring in Indonesia (KNMI) discussed the amount of the 2015 El-Nino related fire carbon emissions compared to the extreme 1997 event. CAMS provided input on emissions (GFAS), which was evaluated with independent MOPPIT satellite and in-situ data. Then, a fast and reliable estimate of total carbon emissions over South-East Asia was calculated for 2015. A 20-40% uncertainty of total emissions was estimated and shown that 2015 emissions amounted to ~25% of 1997 emissions. Helping CAMS towards the market in solar energy (Transvalor) presented CAMS solar radiation data which experience an increasing use also outside the solar energy field; several possible side uses were identified during interaction with costumers: Consultancy in energy monitoring / operations of buildings; photovoltaics – spectral irradiance; low altitude solar drone flight time optimization; study of a generic hybrid ventilation system; solar irradiation variations for video generation and photography; model of a train track temperature from meteorological data and GHI and DNI; bio-energy (algae growth); radiation effect on the development and toxicity of cyanobacterial blooms in reservoirs; water disinfection by solar radiation; grape market success – UV radiation determines wine aroma in changing climate. Allergenic pollen forecasts (FMI) discussed the importance of allergen information (about a quarter of the population suffer from pollen, right timing of medication determines its success). CAMS European ensemble provides pollen forecast maps for 6 species; European Allergy Network as partners recommends joint service delivery with expert involvement (expert assessment before release). Future direction goes for personalized symptoms forecasting using land use regressions of 10s of meters).



Block 3 – Short pitches introducing (new) CAMS applications in NL and B Dutch added-value sector (NEVASCO) represents 20 organisations, covering the whole value chain from the markets to data. Its aim is to generate business, including Asia. Highest potential is seen in agrobusiness and food security markets of Asia (need for fresh air in encapsulation industry: site selection of a factory near low levels of pollution) and energy: emergency services, emission tracking. HR AQ data for the benefit of public at large (Long Fonds) aims at creating awareness and urgency for clean air. Thus there is a need for air quality data at street level and the gap from CAMS regional resolution needs to be closed. Satellite data for health impact assessments, Research IRAS (university of Utrecht) discussed satellite data use for human exposure assessment (OMI NO2, PM2.5, spatio-temporal variance and annual averages) AURORA (Datacraft.nl), a H2020 project, focuses on stimulation of wider use of Sentinel data (S-3, S5P, S-4, S5) and looks for collaboration with CAMS. Development of EO payload instruments relevant to Air Quality (Airbus) is centered around TropOMI (S5p) based on heritage from SCIAMAHCY and OMI. Air quality applications require high resolution. CAMS-4_ICOS (ECN) is a fast track emission inversion, which appreciates the CAMS emission and flux data, but asks for more documentation and improved service (reduced latency until yesterday, regional zoom) PM (RIVM) focuses on the most severe actual air quality issue, NOx exceedances – for better understanding PM speciation (nitrate, sulfate, sea salt, …) is needed; for environmental impact assessment deposition of NOy, NHx, SOx is required. It is suggested to compare deposition modules of CAMS and other CTMs to understand their accuracies. Allergy Radar (Wageningen Univ) aims to link to symptoms and asks about uncertainties of CAMS pollen forecasts. Impact traffic scenarios Flanders and Slovakia (VITO) is one of the new CAMS use case examples that have just started with some small CAMS co-funding. It assesses road transport scenarios with local fleet data and modelling output. It recommends the use of harmonized / standardized and transparent atmospheric models to reduce chaos by many consultants. Any such analysis needs reliable background (from CAMS) and a clear understanding of CAMS (e.g. emissions); tests are ongoing in several EU27 countries; CAMS has to be high quality.



Sulfur enforcement – merchant shipping (Ministry I&M) reflects the need (due to new legislation) for highly accurate real time monitoring of percentage sulfur in exhaust plumes of each individual ship and calls for the development of sufficiently accurate technology (DOAS, lidar, satellite, modelling, sniffer out on the sea). Block 4 – Panel discussion The panel was made up by Richard Engelen (ECWMF Deputy CAMS head), Stijn Vermote (ECMWF, head Copernicus administrations) Jasper van Loon (Netherlands Copernicus coordinator), Daan Swart (RIVM) and Thomas Popp (DLR, head CAMS User Interaction). Major items which were discussed are summarized in the following paragraphs. How to deal with uncertainties? It is very important, but also challenging to provide the appropriate information on uncertainties. CAMS does put a major focus also on the website, e.g. presenting regular validation reports and online validation results. Where feasible CAMS (and underlying research projects) works towards including uncertainties in the products (error propagation, quality flags, flags for critical conditions, ensemble calculations) as additional layer or at least into the metadata as bulk uncertainties. CAMS also identifies research needs to improve the products and presents them to H2020. As operational service CAMS can also collect large statistics of data and deviations to reference measurements, which can be disseminated and used to create deeper insight into reasons for errors (in external research projects). FAIRMODE is the European initiative to define quality standards for air quality modelling in policy context. Can one routinely connect air quality data with economic, agricultural, public health data? these are all excellent suggestions - this is exactly one role of downstream services, where different types of complementary data from the Copernicus services and other sources are integrated to create new information. High resolution data: It is Copernicus policy that the services leave room for downstream (commercial) services. Accordingly, the current limit set by member states is a 10km horizontal resolution. Therefore, CAMS will provide some level of support (e.g. guidance on statistical downscaling methods), but cannot move to local resolution. It is also seen as essential, that the large dispersity of services to end users is implemented by many local actors (using the local language, knowing best the local rules and habits, combining with local information, using local funds, ...). This topic is a standing discussion in the Copernicus User Forum, where member states representatives can report arguments from users in their country – thus getting into contact with them may influence the evolution of this discussion. Dan Swaart questioned if it is wise that Copernicus makes this distinction / sets this border, since many direct applications need higher resolution. Possibly, CAMS can help develop a framework for downstream services to implement their higher resolution services based on CAMS products (e.g. via the Copernicus Climate Data Store and its planned toolbox). Such a common platform and toolbox across several (all) Copernicus services would also facilitate usage of combined output (best if common format and metadata standards are followed).



Impact of user involvement on service evolution: There have been many changes since the start of GEMS, PROMOTE, MACC projects which were based on intensive collaboration with core users from the very beginning - not all of this has formally been documented since it was always embedded. Since formal requirement analysis has been adopted in MACC-II, the user requirements documents contained also a documentation of the implementation status, as now the user requirement database contains it. Examples of user requirements which determined service evolution are: adding chemical species, vertical layers, extending temporal forecast length to 96 hours (from the nominal 72 hours) so that a user has timely access to a 4-day forecast (of the day before) when he needs to start his own downscaling calculations for a 3-day forecast. On high level the slides presented by T. Popp at the workshop showed some of the most important changes which were implemented due to user requests – such documentation may even increase willingness of users to provide feedback. this statement is reassuring - it is the commitment of the Copernicus program and of CAMS to aim at providing services which are really helping many users in their daily work - to achieve this a close interaction with users is essential and has therefore always been practiced. The formal user interaction process is depicted in the following draft flowchart (as was suggested in one of the postcards).

Figure 1: Draft flow chart illustrating the user interaction process in CAMS What does CAMS recommend on continuing NL CAMS user group? I think that best progress can be achieved by establishing a forum, where new CAMS users can benefit from experienced CAMS users and jointly can think of services to better meet different user needs in daily practice. Steps: get acquainted with CAMS products, test them, share experiences.



Requirements stated • Particulate matter speciation, deposition • Spectrally resolved solar irradiance data • Website improvements (some documents are too hidden, need for better visibility of the service

and product specifications document, the website should invite and stimulate interested parties to dig deeper, the descriptive part of each product in the catalogue should be further elaborated)

• Support to close the gap where high spatial resolution air quality data are needed • Uncertainties of pollen forecasts • Uncertainties of source-receptor calculations • Improved CO2 inversions ((reduced latency until yesterday, regional zoom)) • Highly accurate SO2 observations (ship emissions) • Document in more detail the impact of user interaction on service evolution • Present a process flow chart how user interaction influences service evolution

Note: At their debrief meeting on 29 June 2017, the NL organizing team of this workshop decided to organize another national event in spring 2018 which will be focused on facilitating users and use cases and providing input for the Copernicus annual work program.



4 User feedback / postcards Before block 4 participants were invited to submit postcards with their major comments or questions, to be partly answered during the panel discussions and completely afterwards by e-mail. Here is the collection of postcards (translated to English if provided in Dutch) together with the responses provided by CAMS. Question Sender Reply CAMS

respondent Is it possible to develop a drone which would fly above 12 km and could monitor emissions for the duration of one whole month?

Tjitse Lupgens, ILT

This is an interesting concept, which has however significant legal and technical constraints - one challenge is to find a suitable balance between accurate instruments and weight + power limits of the drone. There are ongoing concept studies for stratospheric high altitude platforms and ESA is organising a conference on this topic in October 2017 (http://haps4esa.org/). CAMS is interested in these developments, but only as a user of these potential new observations.

Thomas Popp/ Richard Engelen

How can CAMS be coupled to AIS data of ships?

Tjitse Lupgens, ILT

In principle there is no technical limit to link atmospheric composition and ship AIS datasets, since both are geolocated and time-tagged data - which application do you have in mind, so that one can judge whether the CAMS resolution is sufficient for it.

Thomas Popp

How can CAMS be used in international discussion/meetings on emission policies?

Tjitse Lupgens, ILT

CAMS underpins with its services and particularly its policy support tools the information basis by mandated authorities such as EEA, DG-ENV, and member states. CAMS interacts with European policy makers through its specific policy user workshops to ensure the CAMS products are providing the right support. The intention of CAMS is to put more focus on emissions (in addition to atmospheric concentrations) in the future.


How should we deal with the fact that both the limitations/uncertainties as well as the interesting applications are greatest at a more detailed [spatial] level?

Leo Oprel, MinEZ

The idea of Copernicus, and therefore CAMS, is to provide information at European scale to allow a downstream market to develop. Copernicus aims to carefully monitor the state of the Earth, but also to create new jobs. For this, a healthy downstream sector is critical. Also, many member states have their own procedures and responsibilities for environmental monitoring and Copernicus is supposed to support these activities and not to replace them. These are the main reasons for CAMS stopping at 10 km resolution for its data products. However, more and more member states are requesting support for downscaling activities and CAMS is now assessing (together with the European Commissions and its advisory and decision boards) how this can be done in the future. We basically will aim for more tailored support and tools for each member state depending on their requirements.




Type CAMS in Google… We don’t get the CAMS webpage. Also true for CAMS & RIVM or CAMS & KNMI. How to improve that?

Arjan Hensen, ECN

CAMS has to comply with Copernicus corporate identity rules. Unfortunately, CAMS does have many other meanings (e.g. cell adhesion molecules, Confederation of Australian Motor Sport, Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality, Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance ) in many different disciplines and in particular related to camera systems. If you type into google CAMS atmosphere or CAMS air or CAMS Copernicus you get to the CAMS website immediately. People on the street shall be targeted by the downstream services building on CAMS - it will then be most important that they find their services (topic and local customized access). Also, the outcome of a google search is very dependent on the country. In English, CAMS does show up within the top 10.

Thomas Popp

CAMS has a lot of wonderful pictures/products. Policy makers might get the impression we “know it all”. How to make sure improving these beautiful maps will not be stopped? So: How to show the uncertainty?

Arjan Hensen, ECN

It is very important, but also challenging to provide the appropriate information on uncertainties. CAMS does put a major focus also on the website, e.g. presenting regular validation reports and online validation results. Where feasible CAMS (and underlying research projects) work towards including uncertainties in the products as additional layer or at least into the metadata as bulk uncertainties. CAMs also identifies research needs to improve the products and presents them to H2020.

Thomas Popp

How can you improve dealing with uncertainties (quantifying, attributing) in future versions of the global CAMS model?

P. van Velthoven, KNMI

It is very important, but also challenging to provide the appropriate information on uncertainties. CAMS does put a major focus also on the website, e.g. presenting regular validation reports and online validation results. Where feasible CAMS (and underlying research projects) work towards including uncertainties in the products as additional layer or at least into the metadata as bulk uncertainties. CAMS also identifies research needs to improve the products and presents them to H2020. As operational service CAMS can also collect large statistics of data and deviations to reference measurements, which can be disseminated and used to create deeper insight into reasons for errors (in external research projects). Finally, CAMS will explore the use of ensemble techniques (both in data assimilation and forecast mode) to better quantify the uncertainties. This is already done to some extent for the regional forecasts using a model ensemble, but more focus will be put on this both for the global and regional forecast systems.




Next round of ITT’s Sept/Oct 2017 for the development of new services, based on CAMS; when will that be announced and how?

Karin Husmann, Airbus

This call is now scheduled for Q4/2017. It will be announced trough the TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) system of the European Commission (http://ted.europa.eu) as well as the CAMS web site.

Richard Engelen

You are going to provide new emission inventories; 1) Will it be done on regional or global scale? 2) Does it include all types of aerosols including dust particles? 3) Will it be accessible for free, if yes, when?

Seyed Omid Nabavi, University of Vienna

Emission will be provided for both the global and the European domains. The data sets will include anthropogenic emissions of aerosol, which does not include dust. Dust emissions are being modelled directly in the forecast models as a function of soil type, moisture and wind speed. The emission data sets will be available for free.

Richard Engelen

What about Benzo(A)pyrene? Under EEA’s AQ report, it is one of 4 most important pollutants. Do you consider providing BaP estimates?

Anonymous CAMS currently does not include Benzo(A)pyrene. We will include your request in our user requirements data base for future consideration.

Richard Engelen

Connect air quality data with: - economic data - agricultural data - public health data In a uniform way

Guus Velders, RIVM

These are all excellent suggestions - this is exactly one role of downstream services, where different types of complementary data from the Copernicus services and other sources are integrated to create new information. Following the INSPIRE directive several efforts are underway to ensure all Copernicus data conform to uniform metadata standards.


1. What is the latency for current observations being available so we could grab the latest data at predefined times? 2. We think ensemble runs for forecasts are probably best. How does the single model forecasts compare with ensembles for each pollutant and will these be available?

Leon Brown, The Weather Company IBM

ad 1) CAMS does not provide observations. The latency of CAMS products (forecasts, analyses, and reanalyses) varies between different CAMS products - see catalogue for details ad 2) currently, only the regional system uses a mode ensemble approach. Ensemble forecasts for the global system are under consideration. Comparisons of the ensemble median to individual models vary by species, region, season and model - see validation reports for more detail; all models data are available.


How does CAMS recommend us to continue in the Dutch user community?

Jennifer Grant/Dutch CAMS team

I think that best progress can be achieved by establishing a national forum, where new CAMS users can benefit from experienced CAMS users and jointly can think of services to better meet different user needs in daily practice. CAMS staff will be happy to attend relevant meetings where possible.


Could you tell a bit more on the current status of data assimilation, i.e. combining satellite data with modelled result? Which data from which satellites are currently assimilated in CAMS?

Len van der Wal, TNO

This is difficult to summarize in a short paragraph. The global system uses 4D-var data assimilation and a list of satellite instruments being assimilated can be found at https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/cams-input-data. The regional systems currently only assimilate surface data and each model has its own data assimilation framework. More background information will be added on-line as part of the re-design of the CAMS web site.

Richard Engelen



Feel free to contact the CAMS service desk for more information on this topic.

Several presentations indicate an interest in high resolution data (spatial) on air quality. Are there plans within CAMS to address this or do you leave this to commercial service providers?

Len van der Wal, TNO



What is the ambition of CAMS for the future resolution of the air quality maps?

Eric van der Swaluw, RIVM

Depending on (future) agreements with the European Commission CAMS will likely stick with ~10 km resolution fort he regional services. For the global services (currently at 40 km resolution) we expect some further improvement over the coming years.

Richard Engelen

PM speciation, N-/S-deposition

Anonymous CAMS is working to explore the information content of the model data for deposition. Aerosol composition is provided in the global service, but not mass-specific for PM in the regional service.

Thomas Popp

Need for high resolution AQ-data in cities and streets (where people live)

Guus Velders, RIVM



Please provide a “CAMS for Dummies” document or a short flyer for promotional purposes

J. Grant, NSO

We will take this suggestion into account. Richard Engelen

If possible, put national J. Grant, This needs to be done through the Thomas



CAMS contacts in contact with each other & provide an opportunity for them to learn from each other in e.g. annual meeting/workshop

NSO Commission or by the national contacts themselves at e.g. User Forum meetings.

Popp

If not yet done already, provide reports of user workshops on website, preferably including CAMS follow-on actions (if any) after the workshop

J. Grant, NSO

For user workshops held so far, minutes are available on the workshop-website (accessible from the CAMS website "events" -> "past events" until June 2014).

Thomas Popp

Show somehow exactly how users have helped to ‘mould’ CAMS: what has changed since the beginning of the programme due to user input?

J. Grant, NSO

Ad 1. There have been many changes since the start of GEMS, PROMOTE, MACC projects which were based on intensive collaboration with core users from the very beginning - not all of this has formally been documented since it was always embedded. Since formal requirement analysis has been adopted in MACC-II, the user requirements documents contained also a documentation of the implementation status, as now the user requirement database contains it. On high level the slides presented by T. Popp at the workshop showed some of the most important changes which were implemented due to user requests.

Thomas Popp

Make clear the process of implementing user-requested changes in CAMS (e.g. short flowchart on website)

J. Grant, NSO

A draft flow chart is attached. Thomas Popp

The above 2 actions might help to create even more willingness amongst users to provide input – it’s nice to see that something is done with your suggestions, especially if it’s a “high-up” European initiative

J. Grant, NSO

This statement is reassuring - it is the commitment of the Copernicus program and of CAMS to aim at providing services which are really helping many users in their daily work - to achieve this a close interaction with users is essential and has therefore always been practiced.

Thomas Popp


atmosphere.copernicus.eu copernicus.eu ecmwf.int

ECMWF - Shinfield Park, Reading RG2 9AX, UK Contact: [email protected]

minutes of the cams user workshop - copernicus atmosphere … · 2017-10-01 · copernicus...

Documents