EVALUATION OF THE OPERATIONAL OZONE FORECAST MODEL OF THE ZAMG WITH MEASUREMENTS OF THE AUSTRIAN AIR QUALITY NETWORK

Operational model forecasts of ozone concentrations are compared to the observations of about 150 air quality stations in Austria. Evaluations of the last three summers revealed that exceedances of the information threshold could be predicted quite well by the model. Investigation of a heat period in summer 2006 indicates possible sources of precursors. The Lagrangian particle model LASAT (www.janicke.de) is used additionally to the chemical model CAMx (www.camx.com) to show the dispersion of the plumes of stacks with high emissions of NOx in the vicinity of Vienna. For two months in summer 2007 sensitivity studies with different input parameters were performed. Model runs with different parameterisations for the vertical diffusion coefficient (Kv) are conducted and experiments with different values of the minimum values of Kv in the lower levels show the influence of this parameter on the nocturnal ozone decrease for different sites. Different model runs with variable boundary conditions at the top of the modelling domain as well as variable total ozone column data are performed