The ultimate goal of the CAQIMS program is to project climate and air quality variations at scales that are crucial to human activities and natural resources in Illinois. These variations are determined not only by local geographic characteristics, including topography, hydrology, land cover/use, and surface gas/aerosol emission, but also by remote large-scale anomalies through planetary atmospheric circulations. The physical processes and underlying mechanisms are scale-specific and no single model is able to represent all of them. Thus, an integrated CAQIMS is required to incorporate realistic information flows between different scales of environmental and societal processes. The CAQIMS includes, in the increasing order of spatial resolution and computational burden, GCM, RCM, LPM, and CIM.

Click on the graphic below or choose from the list to learn more about selected parts of the model.

General Circulation Model (GCM) Regional Climate Model (RCM) Local Process Model (LPM) Climate Impact Model (CIM) Air Quality Model (AQM) Hydrology Model (HYM)

A GCM (general circulation model) represents planetary scale phenomena (>100 km), which are forced by persistent surface anomalies, especially those of tropical SST, Eurasian/North American snow cover and soil moisture. Through wave activity and global teleconnection, these phenomena control the synoptic regimes prevailing over the Midwest. This control is primarily caused by the midlatitude westerly jet stream, which steers transient disturbances into the domain. An RCM (regional climate model) is designed to depict interactions between synoptic scale motions and mesoscale structures. Such interactions are influenced by distinct geographic characteristics, which in turn determine active local processes, including convection/cloud formation, surface-air exchange and hydrological cycle. The RCM, while resolving mesoscales (~30 km), is nevertheless forced to parameterize these important local scale (<10 km) processes. To explicitly resolve these processes, an LPM (local process model) is required to include a CRM (cloud resolving model) and an LSM (land surface model). The LPM describes in detail the local processes and provides the finest-resolution climate information for practical applications. A CIM (climate impact model) links local climate variations with societal activities, including public health, ecology, agriculture, industry, and economy. These activities strongly depend on local airshed and watershed variations, which may be predicted by an AQM (air quality model) and an HYM (hydrology model). The models to be used to address each of several scientific issues will depend on the spatial and temporal resolution required.

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