Modeling Effects of Climate Change on Air Quality and Population Exposure in Urban Planning Scenarios

Figure 1

Conceptual overview of the model chain used in the present study. The global climate models (ECHAM5 A1B-r3 and HadCM3 A1B-ref) utilizing the A1B climate scenario are being regionally downscaled by the Rossby centre regional climate model, RCA3. The regional and urban air quality models (MATCH) are driven by the same three-dimensional meteorology but forced by different emissions estimates, the urban air quality model takes boundary concentrations from the European-scale air quality model. The calculated near-surface concentrations from the urban scale air quality simulation are finally coupled to gridded population data to produce population exposure in the urban domain.