Keynote Speakers

ECMWF, United Kingdom

Laurence Rouil

TOPIC: Pollen monitoring and forecasting within the Copernicus Atmosphere monitoring Service

Dr. Laurence Rouil has been appointed as Director of the Copernicus Atmosphere monitoring services at ECMWF in February 2024. She received her PHD in applied Mathematics in 1995 and has more than 25 years of experience in the field of air pollution and atmospheric chemistry modelling, developed at Ineris, the public French Institute for industrial environments and risks. Before joining ECMWF, she was the Director of the strategy and science policy for this organisation. Since  2014, she is the chair of the EMEP steering Body, the scientific program dealing with air pollutants concentrations and deposition monitoring and control under the UNECE Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air pollution.

ABSTRACT:
Since 2014 the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring service, implemented by ECMWF on behalf of the European Commission, delivers relevant near real time (NRT) information about the atmospheric composition and its impacts on air quality, human health, ecosystems, radiatiative forcing , solar radiation and climate variables. CAMS operates at the global and regional (European) scales. It is built upon an integrated approach which combines observation data and models with the most up-to-date and appropriate methodologies to  provide the best ambient air concentrations forecasts and assessments. Pollens monitoring and forecasting is one of the component of the regional portfolio and more details about their implementation and performance are given in this presentation.

Pollen modelling is carried out by a unique set of eleven regional air quality models run by European teams which have developed robust cutting-edge systems. The median average of the outputs provided by the eleven models is used to build up an ensemble model, which is more robust and usually performs better than the individual models. Modelling work is complemented and evaluated by monitoring data gathered from European aeroallergen  monitoring networks.

CAMS provides every day of the year forecasts of pollen concentrations, expressed in grains/m3, for 6 species considered as among the most allergen: alder, birch, grass, mugwort, olive, ragweed. Collaboration with interested users and experts from the aeroallergen community is essential to tailor developments and propose service evolutions that reflects current state of the art and needs. CAMS has set-up several approaches to work in close collaboration with the user communities and they will be detailed in the presentation: national collaboration programmes  (NCPs) to facilitate CAMS data uptake by national experts, contribution to the Copernicus Thematic Hubs, in particular the Copernicus Health Hub that gathers and displays showcases for targeted applications, contribution to other initiatives like the European Climate and Health Observatory (Clim-ADAPT).