Joint work with Heinz Hass and Benedikt Schell.

Atmospheric particles are comprised of a complex mixture of a variety of organic and inorganic substances that can be of primary or secondary nature and span several orders of magnitude in size. This complexity together with significant gaps in knowledge of the formation and transformation processes provides an ambitious task for the development of atmospheric models for particulate matter. However potential impacts of these particles and the new standards for particulate matter require the development and application of sophisticated Air Quality Models for particles.

Using the MADE Model (Modal Aerosol Dynamics Model for Europe) as an example we will try to identify the lessons that can be learned from the current state of particulate matter models and the needs for further development of these models. A key question here is to define the level of model complexity that is required to obtain sufficient information on atmospheric particles while keeping the computational burdens feasible. Therefore the following questions will be addressed:

• Which processes need to be included into a PM air quality model?

• What are the required input data for PM modeling?

• Where are the most important knowledge gaps?

• How non-linear is the response of secondary PM to precursor emission reductions?

• How important is the contribution of secondary organic particles resulting from anthropogenic and biogenic precursors to the PM load?

• How large is the primary particle contribution to the PM load over Europe?

• Which contributions are most likely to be responsible for violation of PM air quality standards?

• Which numerical implementations are suitable for aerosol modeling?

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1999-2000 Reactive Flow and Transport Phenomena

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