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FLEXPART forecasts for ASIA-AQ
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MBEES, Faculty of Medicine, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany
PI: Christoph Knote, christoph.knote@med.uni-augsburg.de
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(1) General remarks
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- Inert transport is assumed, background concentrations are ignored.
- Terms of use: contact PI before use in presentation of publication.
- Feel free to contact us for questions and comments.

(2) Wildfires
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Provided are quantitative forecasts of a tracer resembling carbon 
monoxide (CO) from wildfires within the model domain. This tracer is
chemically inert during transport.

Types of plots
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"Ground level" (e.g., as observed by monitoring stations), "Xkm-agl" 
slices at X kilometer above ground level (e.g., as observed by in-situ
obs on research aircraft), and full tropospheric "column-integral" 
(e.g., as observed by satellite / remote sensing).

"Airmass age" 
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"age" products present atmospheric transport times since emission 
from the fire. Color is transport time, opacity a relative measure of
concentration.

"Concentration" 
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Either as (volume) mixing ratio (for ground level and altitude slices) 
or column-integrated concentration (for column-integral).

Setup and methods:

- Lagrangian transport: FLEXPART 10.4
- Emission inventory: CAMS Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS)

- Daily forecasts, 5 days out

(3) Source attribution
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Provided are quantitative source attribution estimates using 
Lagrangian backtrajectories convolved with emission inventories 
and stratified by source sectors and spatial regions.

"Sector contributions" 
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Concentration increments in ppbv (parts per billion per volume) as 
measured at the receiver (station, airplane) due to emissions 
within model domain on top of an unknown background. Shown are
contributions of the most relevant sectors (color-coded) and 
the total contribution of all sectors (line).

"Airmass footprint"
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Regions where airmass was in contact with the surface.

"Airmass age"
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Transport time since emissions where picked up by the airmass. 
Shown as relative contributions over time (color-coded), and 
as average age weighted by relative contribution ("Mean age").

"Source regions"
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Convolution of airmass footprint and emission inventory of a 
given source category. Shown as map, and as pie charts of the 
relative contributions of different spatial regions.

Setup for ASIA-AQ:

- Lagrangian transport: FLEXPART 10.4
- Emission inventory: EDGARv5
- Source regions: NaturalEarth Admin0 (Countries)

- Attribution calculated every 3 hours, for up to 6 days into the future
- Only the 6 most relevant source sectors shown for each species.