Adms-airport: Model Inter-comparisions and Model Validation

The functionality of ADMS-Airport and details of its use in the Model Inter-comparison Study of the Project for the Sustainable Development of Heathrow Airport (PSDH) have previously been presented, Carruthers et al (2007). A distinguishing feature is the treatment of jet engine emissions as moving jet sources rather than averaging these emissions into volume sources as is the case in some other models. In this presentation two further studies are presented which each contribute to the overall evaluation of the model. In the Heathrow study on adding capacity (third runway) further comparisons have been made between the measured NOx, NO2 and PM10 concentrations from the large number of automatic monitoring sites located in the neighbourhood of Heathrow Airport and the ADMS-Airport predictions. A range of tools is employed with which to present the comparisons including the BOOT validation toolkit and concentration wind roses. In the CAEPport study a fictional but realistic airport was ‘constructed’ for a model inter-comparison study the purposes of which were (i) to determine that air quality airport models put forward for CAEP (ICAO’s Committee on Environmental Aviation Protection) analysis are ‘sufficiently robust, rigorous and transparent’ for forthcoming CAEP analyses and (ii) to explain differences in the models. The study included consideration of both emissions and air pollution concentrations however the focus here will be on the modelled concentrations. Results for ADMS-Airport from this study will be presented along with those of the other participating models – EDMS, LASPORT and ALAQS.