Welcome to the
Air and Climate Unit!

Dear visitor,
By the time you come to this page, you will have browsed through other pages of our website. We hope you like it! Deep in the site you will find detailed information about the activities of the Unit: results, data, collaborations, etc. The first few pages, however, were set up to explain to you in a simple way what we are doing and why. We want to share with you our enthusiasm for doing scientific research, and in particular research that is directly linked to problems we face in our daily lives: climate change, air pollution, deterioration of ecosystems, etc.

Understanding problems can help us prepare to resolve them!

The mission of the Air and Climate Unit is to provide scientific support for the development and monitoring of European Union policies in the area of air pollution and climate change. This includes, for example, the Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution and the Climate and Energy Package. The Unit also supports the European Union in fulfilling its duties as Party to international environmental conventions such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, with its Kyoto Protocol, and the UN Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP), with its Gothenburg Protocol.

The Unit is committed to developing a systemic view on the environment and human intervention. With its interdisciplinary team of physicists, chemists, meteorologists, ecologists and economists, the Unit studies the interactions between the Atmosphere, Biosphere and Climate (ABC) and human activities. Based on these competences, it leads the efforts at the JRC in assessing the changes in the composition of the atmosphere, and its impact on climate, air quality and biodiversity.

The work in the Unit includes data gathering and modelling activities such as the development and maintenance of European and global data systems for greenhouse gases and other air pollutants (CARBODATAAFOLU DATA, EDGAR), and scenario modelling with chemistry biosphere/climate models (CHIMERE, TM5, CLM, ECHAM), that run from the urban to the global scale. Simplified versions of such models, like the FAst Scenario Screening Tool (TM5- FASST), are use to assess policy options.

To carry out its experimental tasks, the Climate Change and Air Quality Unit runs the European Reference Laboratory for Air pollution (ERLAP) which is engaged in the harmonisation of air pollution measurements in Europe. It also runs the Atmosphere, Biosphere, Climate Integrated Station (ABC-IS) which is an advance monitoring station that supports the CLRTAP air pollution monitoring programe (through the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme, EMEP) and in support of the European Strategic Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) and the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS).

The Unit collaborates with the best institutions in Europe and worldwide, in order to provide policy support based on the best science available.

The work of the Unit is carried out in two Research Actions:

Action 24006 - BIOCLIM (Biosphere, Climate and Human interactions)

Action 24007 - AIRCLIM (Air, Climate and Human interactions)

We hope you will find our website not only interesting but also useful.