Overview and some preliminary results from the COST-715 Action: “Meteorology applied to urban air pollution problems”

Urban meteorology and pollution are characterised by a number of atmospheric parameters and their evolution in time, which all have specific problems as to their monitoring, representativeness, parameterisation and modelling compared to rural situations. The main goal of the Action COST-715 (1998-2004) was to provide the best guidance on how meteorology may be included in pollution calculations related to urban areas. It aimed at increasing knowledge of, and the accessibility to, meteorological parameters that determine urban pollution levels, by comparing methods in use in European countries, to lead to recommendations on the best way of using routinely available meteorological information in air pollution assessments in urban areas. We present some results of COST-715 on: estimating the surface energy balance and the mixing height, the siting of meteorological measurements in the urban atmosphere, practices for forecasting pollution episodes and the availability and accessibility of data for prediction and assessment models.