Earth System Modelling for Aeronautics, Space, Transport and Energy (ESM) Department

The department Earth System Modelling (ESM) develops and operates a wide range of atmospheric and climate models to replicate and research atmospheric processes from the global to the local scale. Investigating the chemical composition of the troposphere and stratosphere plays a central role in quantifying the effects of anthropogenic and natural emissions on trace gas and aerosol concentrations as well as climate and air quality with the help of a sound understanding of the processes involved.

The research topics include:

  • transport and climate, quantification of transport effects (land, sea, air), evaluation of mitigation options,
  • coupled dynamical, physical and chemical processes in the global atmosphere,
  • climate effects of aerosols,
  • investigations on water vapour, ice-saturated regions, and cirrus clouds,
  • clouds and convection in global climate models,
  • linkage of remote-sensing data and numerical model simulations,
  • Lagrangian transport schemes,
  • development of simplified climate models.

The department uses mainly the following simulation models:

  • global models of the atmosphere and the climate system, in particular the coupled chemistry-climate model EMAC (ECHAM-MESSy-Atmospheric-Chemistry) for large-scale processes and interactions,
  • the mesoscale model COSMO embedded in EMAC (--> MECO(n))  for regional chemistry-climate studies and accompanying simulations for measurement campaigns,
  • the simplified climate models (AirClim, AirTraf) for assessing the role of single anthropogenic climate influences and of mitigation measures.

Diverse meteorological data sets (e.g. numerical analyses of the ECMWF, long time-series of in-situ data, satellite data products) are used in the research work. Special diagnostic and statistical tools are applied and further developed for the data analysis.

Research Groups

Loading

Contact

Prof. Dr. Anja Schmidt

Head of Department
Institute of Atmospheric Physics
Earth System Modelling for Aeronautics, Space, Transport and Energy
Münchner Straße 20, 82234 Oberpfaffenhofen-Wessling