Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) globally provides consistent and quality-controlled information related to air pollution and health, solar energy, greenhouse gases and climate forcing. It is implemented by the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), in close cooperation with ESA and EUMETSAT, and offers information services based on satellite Earth observation, in situ (non-satellite) data, and modelling.
These services are provided in six thematic areas:
Air quality and atmospheric composition
Air pollution is a permanent source of concern in densely populated and industrialized areas across the entire globe. According to a 2019 report of the European Environment Agency (EEA), it causes 400,000 premature deaths in Europe every year and increases risks on respiratory problems and heart and vascular diseases. Therefore fighting air pollution is extremely important. To get a better indication on air pollutants’ dispersion and transport, CAMS provides daily analyses and forecasts of the worldwide long-range transports, as well as the background air quality for the European domain. These forecasts can be used as is, but they also serve as input to several downstream services, such as national air quality forecasts,smartphone applications, and policy tools. The CAMS information on global pollution and European air quality reaches millions of users.Solar Energy
Solar energy is globally becoming an increasingly important renewable energy source, with an annual growth of about 30% per year. Large investments are made in building enormous solar energy power plants and small-scale rooftop solar panels. The amount of available solar radiation primarily depends on the season, time of day, and the location’s latitude. It is further affected by clouds, aerosol particles, ozone molecules, and water vapour in the atmosphere. These atmospheric components partly reflect or absorb solar radiation, which has a significant impact on the power plants and rooftop solar panels’ efficiency. To give the renewable energy sector and policy makers accessible and accurate solar radiation information, CAMS uses satellite observations and its atmospheric models to provide total and direct irradiance climatologies. This helps the solar energy sector to plan both large solar power farms and small-scale rooftop installations to maximize future outputs.Ozone layer and ultraviolet (UV) Radiation
Ozone (O3) is a colourless and very reactive gas present in all atmosphere layers. About 90% of O3 is found in the stratosphere (~15 - 50 km altitude). This stratospheric ozone protects life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation and is therefore often called ‘good’ ozone. This in contrast to tropospheric ozone (at 0 - 15 km altitude), which is an air pollutant that can be harmful to humans, animals, and vegetation. See Figure 1 for a typical ozone abundance vertical profile.
Figure 1: Tropospheric and stratospheric ozone abundance. Image taken from the CAMS website.
Over the last decades, human-made chemicals emissions have impacted the atmospheric O3 amount. The most obvious example is the strong chemical stratospheric O3 depletion over the Antarctic, better known as ‘the Antarctic ozone hole’. To reverse the ozone depletion into recovery, the Montreal Protocol entered into force in 1989. This international treaty resulted in the producton phase out of ozone depleting substances, slowly leading to the Antarctic ozone layer recovery. To ensure a succesful Montreal Protocol execution over a long time period, policy makers need information about ozone’s and related chemical species’ abundance in the stratosphere. CAMS monitors the ozone layer on a daily basis showing among others the extent and magnitude of the yearly ozone hole development and recovery. In addition, CAMS provides a historical record from 2003 onwards based on its global reanalysis that combines observations with the CAMS global models describing the atmospheric composition. Further, CAMS daily monitors and forecasts the amount of UV radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, taking into account the effect of ozone, clouds, and aerosol particles.
- Climate Forcing
In a steady-state climate, the Earth receives as much energy from the Sun as is lost into space. The solar energy loss is due to reflectance and absorption by the atmosphere (cloud and aerosol particles, carbon dioxide, ozone and water vapour) and the Earth’s surface. Climate forcing is defined by the Earth’s energy budget imbalance caused by a change in the climate system, for example driven by human activities. Also known as Radiative Forcing, it determines the change in globally-averaged temperature change resulting from the natural or human-induced changes to the energy budget. Figure 2 shows the contribution of the various climate system components to the observed global temperature change for 1951 - 2010. Increases in greenhouse gas concentrations over the industrial era are responsible for a positive climate (radiative) forcing. In contrast, changes in atmospheric aerosol concentrations result in a negative climate forcing, leading to an energy loss. The difference between the various climate forcings drive the global temperature change.
CAMS provides estimates of climate forcings separately for carbon dioxide, methane, tropospheric ozone, stratospheric ozone, interactions between anthropogenic aerosols and radiation, and interactions between anthropogenic aerosols and clouds. The CAMS climate forcing estimates follow the definition of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the United Nation’s (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that relate all changes with respect to the pre-industrial year 1750.
Figure 2: Contributions to observed global temperature change 2010 - 2019 relative to 1850 - 1900 based on two complementary approaches.
Taken from Figure SPM.2 in IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
- Emissions and Surface Fluxes
The Earth’s major atmospheric components are nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%), argon (0.9%), and carbon dioxide (0.04%). Various trace gas components are present due to the various exchange processes between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere. Some of these exchanges occur naturally, others are human-induced. An accurate description of the atmospheric composition in air quality forecast and climate models is highly dependent on these exchange processes. CAMS compiles emission inventory data that serve as input to the atmospheric chemistry-transport models. These inventories are based on a combination of existing datasets and new information, describing emissions from fossil fuel combustion, volcanoes, and vegetation. This ensures good consistency between the emissions of greenhouse gases, reactive gases, and aerosol particles and their precursors. These inventories also project existing datasets forward in time, timely producing input data for forecast models. CAMS provides quantitative information on key greenhouse gases by estimating net surface carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) fluxes from satellite and in-situ observations. In addition, CAMS uses satellite observations to daily estimate aerosol, chemical species, and greenhouse gas emissions from biomass burning and wildfires.
Figure 3: Air pollutant emission sources. Image taken from the CAMS website.
- Policy Tools
The 2008 European Ambient Air Quality Directive sets legally binding limits for major health impacting air pollutants concentrations, such as particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). To monitor and manage their compliance, countries perform accurate measurements of these pollutants. In addition, some countries have established their own national air quality modelling capabilities. Air pollution is transported within or from outside Europe and can be a major contribution to local air pollution episodes. CAMS supports policy makers on national, regional, and local levels with a set of tools and reports that describe air quality in Europe and its inter-annual evolution in their Annual Assessment Reports. The policy scenarios are interactive web applications based on the CAMS air quality models output and among others provide information about emission reduction effects on air quality (scenario tools). Both reports and tools are used by policy makers at city, regional, and national scale for their short-term and long-term planning and decision making related to air quality issues.