Air Quality Forecasting - also referred as "Atmospheric Dispersion Modeling" (wikipedia) is the art of simulating how air pollutants, such as PM_2.5 or Ozone, disperse in the ambient atmosphere.

The result of the simulation gives the ambient concentration for each air pollutants, from which the Air Quality Index can be calculated.

There are dozens of dispersion models and many universities and institutions around the world are running one or several of them for different regions (eg Europe, Continental US, Asia ...). Below is a non-exhaustive and selected list of few models which are being used for providing Air Quality forecast on the "World Air Quality Index" project.

Atmospheric Models

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For more information about the underlying concepts of Air Quality forecasting (or Atmospheric Dispersion Modeling), check the article on a visual study of wind impact of PM_2.5 concentration.

The above prediction is based on composite meta model, computed using several Air Quality Forecasting Systems (AQFS):

• The Spectral Radiation-Transport Model for Aerosol Species (Sprintars) model from Kyushu University.
• The China National Air Quality forecast by Zhejiang Experts in Experimental Sciences (PM2.5科学实验专家小组).
• The Air Korea Air Quality forecast, by the Korean Integrated Air Quality forecast center(대기질 통합예보센터).
• The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) near-realtime surface ensemble forecast , by the ECMWF.
• The System for Integrated modeLling of Atmospheric coMposition (SILAM) by the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI).
• The Max Planck Institut fur Meteorologie (MPIM) model.
• The Ozone Air Quality Model (AQM) by the NOAA/NCEP.
• The Regional Air Quality Deterministic Prediction System (RAQDPS) model from the Government of Canada.
• The irCELine (Belgian Interregional Environment Agency) for the Belgian Regions.
• The LCSQA (Laboratoire Central de Surveillance de la Qualité de l’Air) for France.
• The RIVM (Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu) for the Netherlands.
• The SILAM (System for Integrated modeLling of Atmospheric coMposition) for Northen Europe.
• The EURAD (EURopean Air Pollution Dispersion) for Central Europe.

The above map is based on the PM_2.5 surface level modeling, and colors are following the US EPA AQI standard.