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MetPrep: A model-agnostic meteorological pre-processor for emergency applications in local volcanic emission dispersal

Alexandros Panagiotis Poulidis 1, Leonardo Mingari2, Maria Kanakidou1,3,4, Mihalis Vrekoussis1,5,6, Arnau Folch2

  • Affiliations: 1Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP), University of Bremen, Germany 2Geociencias Barcelona (GEO3-BCN), CSIC, Spain 3Environmental Chemical Processes Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, University of Crete, Greece 4Center of the Study of Air Quality & Climate Change (C-STACC), ICE-HT, Foundation for Research and Technology -- Hellas (FORTH), Patras, Greece 5Center of Marine Environmental Sciences (MARUM), University of Bremen, Germany 6Climate and Atmosphere Research Center (CARE-C), The Cyprus Institute, Cyprus 

  • Presentation type: Poster

  • Presentation time: Thursday 16:30 - 18:30, Room Poster Hall

  • Poster Board Number: 262

  • Programme No: 6.4.9

  • Theme 6 > Session 4

Abstract

Pollutant transport modelling is used to simulate pollution events (such as volcanic emissions) and guide mitigation strategies. When focusing on local impacts, atmospheric circulations influenced by the topography around the source become vital in capturing the correct dispersal pathways. However, given the urgent nature of such events, employing dynamical downscaling models (e.g. the Weather Research and Forecasting model; WRF) in high-enough resolution is often impossible within the emergency time constraints. As a trade-off between accuracy and computational time, diagnostic wind models are often employed to adjust the wind fields of global datasets by applying first-order topographic corrections. Numerous such models exist, but are either based on legacy code, or tied to particular transport models. To counteract this, as part of the EU Center of Excellence for Exascale in Solid Earth project (ChEESE-2P), we have developed a model-agnostic meteorological preprocessor (MetPrep). MetPrep ingests coarse meteorological data, applies topographic corrections based on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) 1 Arc-Second digital elevation map and creates output mimicking the format of WRF, allowing for the use of any model that uses WRF data as input (e.g. FALL3D, FLEXPART, HYSPLIT). As a pilot study we couple MetPrep with FALL3D and focus on the Tajogaite eruption at Cumbre Vieja, La Palma (September-December 2021), which highlighted difficulties in accurately forecasting gas dispersal over complex topography leading to severe impacts on human activities. This study is part of the grant PCI2022-134973-2 funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union "NextGenerationEU"/PRTR and Germany's Excellence Strategy grant (EXC 2077).