Application of a modeling-system to assess regional pollution in Chile

Chile is facing a strong economical development. This development has consequences on the environment such as air pollution on local and regional scales. Strong measures are required to prevent and curb these problems. Models, which describe emissions, transport, chemistry and deposition processes of the atmospheric constituents are one of the tools that must be developed tools for the evaluation and assessment of anthropogenic impact on the atmosphere.

The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) has developed through the years a modeling-system (HIRLAM-MATCH) applicable to regional air pollution problems. Through a recently started join project between SMHI and Chilean Comission for the Environment (CONAMA) the HIRLAM-MATCH system has been implemented and applied in central Chile. Central Chile concentrates a large fraction of the population and significant anthropogenic emissions of pollutants to the atmosphere take place, including those coming from large cupper smelters.

This work describes preliminar results regarding the application of HIRLAM-MATCH in Central Chile. The evaluation of a high resolution, three-dimensional, meteorological data set produced by the meteorological module (HIRLAM) is presented. Also, a first evaluation of the dispersion and chemistry module (MATCH) focusing in sulfur compounds is presented.