CFORS (Chemical weather FORecasting System)


CFORS web page


The Uno Lab. (Atmospheric Dynamics Section), Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, Kyushu University completed the Chemical weather FORecasting System (CFORS), which is targeted for Asian region, supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency. CFORS has been available since January 2001.

Traditional weather forecast predicts only changes in atmospheric condition. CFORS is the "chemical" weather forecasting system which routinely predicts transport of atmospheric chemical substances such as atmospheric pollutants and Asian dust in any domain. It simulates transport, diffusion, and deposition processes for next three days coupled with the state-of-the-art regional climate model and transport model. This routine system contributes to prediction of long-range transport of atmospheric pollutants and Asian dust and regional atmospheric environment.

The system consists of

1) CFORS ftp manager: Acquiring meteorological data from National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) or Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).

2) RAMS version 4.3.0: Simulating meteorological condition for next three days with NCEP or JMA data as boundary condition.

3) Transport model coupled with RAMS: Calculating transport of dust, sulfate, black carbon, sea salt, CO, Hydrocarbon, Radon, etc.

4) CFORS web manager: Uploading images of the simulated result to CFORS web site.

The system automatically uploads images around 8AM JST every day. CFORS worked on the Beowulf Linux parallel computer with 17 nodes of Pentium III 600MHz and on the Linux system with Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz now.

The system was developed for supporting the ACE-Asia international intensive observational project in springtime 2001, and has been worked since then. The horizontal domain is all of Asian regions and the vertical is from 0 to 23 km. The horizontal resolution is 80 km. You can see the prediction system in the CFORS web site.

CFORS web page