2.3. Air quality system
The air quality system of AERIS describes the complex meteorological
and chemical processes that influence air quality through
the use of three sequential modules: atmospheric dispersion, secondary
pollutants module and indicator calculation. Although
differentiated, these three modules have been gathered to constitute
the air quality system under a global idea of “atmospheric transport and transformation module” (Fig. 2). In general, this
system links changes in pollutants emissions at the various sources
(quantified through a VPi) to responses in impact-relevant air
quality indicators for each of the modelled cells (Amann et al.,
2011). Usually atmospheric dispersion modules rely on reducedform
representations of full AQMSs. To this respect, AERIS mimics
air quality simulations based on the WRF model for the description
of meteorology and the CMAQ model for the atmospheric chemistry
and dispersion.