17 Dec 2018C40 promoting climate action for healthier city living

With urban areas expected to accommodate two thirds of the world's population by 2050, radical action is needed to change the way we run our cities say C40, a network of cities committed to climate action.

The new research findings, produced in collaboration with CERC, BuroHappold and LSHTM, show that if C40's 96 member cities take the ambitious actions outlined in the report they could see an 87% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a 49% reduction in PM_2.5 levels, 223,000 premature deaths averted and up to $583 billion in economic benefit.

Within the city environment, buildings and road traffic together contribute more than 75% of greenhouse gas emissions and 50% of PM_2.5 concentrations. The report details ways to target the biggest polluters and thus tackle climate change and urban air pollution together, using specific case studies of actions taken in cities around the world.

4 Dec 20182018 ADMS User Group Meetings — presentations are available to download

Following this year's ADMS User Group Meetings, which took place in Edinburgh on 7-8 November, electronic copies of the presentations are now available to download from the CERC website User Area. Model users with a valid support contract, including all annual licence holders, are entitled to register for password-protected access to the User Area. To register, or to be reminded of your password, click here.

28 Nov 2018ADMS 5.2.4 patch released

There is a new version of ADMS 5 available, which is a minor update to version 5.2. The new release includes the latest versions of AERMOD (18081), AERMAP (18081) and AERMET (18081) as released by the US-EPA. View the readme document for further details about the update. Current users should login to the User Area to download the patch. This patch can be applied to ADMS 5.2, 5.2.1 or 5.2.2.

20 Nov 2018Training the Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service

In October CERC expert consultants spent two weeks in Zagreb (Croatia) training six specialists from the Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service (DHMZ) in the use of CERC's air quality software.

During the first week the focus was on urban and regional modelling, using CERC's ADMS-Urban. CERC's EMIT was also introduced as a comprehensive tool for collating and editing data for use in ADMS-Urban. The delegates from the DHMZ had experience of regional modelling and were interested in using CERC's Regional Model Link to 'nest' the high-resolution ADMS-Urban model in a regional domain, for instance in and around the city of Zagreb.

The team at DHMZ were also interested in industrial and puff modelling. Hence, some time was spent learning about ADMS 5 and its applications, such as how to carry out an industrial study. ADMS-Puff was introduced as a tool to model finite duration releases.

This dedicated two-week training visit was a highly productive opportunity to present several CERC air quality models together, modelling at different scales on a local, urban and regional basis. If you are interested in CERC's training courses please visit our website or contact us.

8 Nov 2018Detailed ADMS-Urban modelling for Greater Manchester's Clean Air Plan

Greater Manchester is developing a Clean Air Plan to tackle illegally high levels of roadside air pollution across the city-region. They have carried out detailed modelling with CERC's ADMS-Urban software, which is widely used for developing and testing policy and action plans for air quality improvement. The modelling identified 152 stretches of road likely to have levels of NO2 in breach of legal limits beyond 2020 if no action is taken (i.e. annual average above 40 μg/m3). An interactive map shows which stretches of road are affected.

To develop the Clean Air Plan, Greater Manchester is considering a wide range of measures that could help reduce roadside NO2 levels. The final Clean Air Plan will include a combination of interventions from a shortlist of 14 potential measures including retrofitting public transport and local authority fleets, increasing use of alternative fuels and electric vehicles, and Clean Air Zones. No decision has been taken yet on which of these measures will be included in the final Greater Manchester Clean Air Plan. The Greater Manchester Clean Air Plan Business Case is required to be submitted to Government by 31 December 2018.