Overview
The Final Assembly of GEMS will take the form of a symposium that will present and foster discussion of the scientific and technical basis needed for provision of user-oriented environmental information services related to atmospheric composition. The focus will be on the achievements of the 
GEMS project, which began on 1 March 2005 and concludes on 31 May 2009. GEMS has developed and implemented comprehensive data analysis and modelling systems for monitoring the global distributions of atmospheric constituents important for climate, and for monitoring and forecasting air quality and UV radiation, with a focus on Europe. Current GEMS products can be found here.
Six half-day sessions will be held. The first session will introduce the fundamental science and challenges, present the need for services, and provide an overview of GEMS. The other sessions will be focussed on specific themes of GEMS: global greenhouse gases, global reactive gases, global aerosols, air-quality forecasting for Europe and cross-cutting validation. These sessions will incorporate contributions on a sixth theme of GEMS: development of the integrated global production system. Each will include an introduction to its theme and a set of talks from project participants aimed at encompassing all work done for the project, with speakers reviewing the contributions of other partners in the project as well as their own. Sessions may include an invited talk from a speaker outside the project, to provide a wider context. The symposium will conclude with a brief look to the future, in particular in the context of MACC, the pilot project for the core atmospheric service component of the Kopernikus initiative. MACC is scheduled to begin in June 2009.
The meeting is open to all. All participants, whether from the GEMS project or not, will have the opportunity to present posters on their work. Please use the 
registration form and don't forget to book your hotel if you wish to attend. Registration is possible until 16 February 2009, the registration fee is 120 €.
The symposium will start at 14:00h on Tuesday, 31 March 2009, and end at 13:00 h on Friday, 3 April.
This animation from the GEMS reanalysis simulation shows a typical transport event of pollution from North American forest fires (there was a lot of forest burning in
Alaska during July 2004) and anthropogenic activities (note the coloured clouds over New York) onto the North Atlantic and towards Europe. One can also see the export of pollution from Europe into the tropical Atlantic region. The animations show a composite of NASA
blue marble images with superimposed layers of carbon monoxide pollution (left) and ozone pollution (right) at a pressure level of 900 hPa (roughly 1 km above sea surface).
last change 14.01.2009 |
