Session 9: Focus on Air Quality

Session 9:
Focus on Air Quality

At this point in the course, most everything we discuss has a direct importance to air quality. However, we will still keep a focus section to devote space to certain issues that affect air quality that may not necessarily fit in other areas. In this focus section, we will discuss "prediction" vs. "projection."

Recent advancements in numerical modeling have given the meteorology community some of the most advanced and useful tools with which they can improve the quality of simulations of the atmosphere. With the use of air quality models, researchers can now project what our air will be like in a hundred years.

Notice I used the word "project," not "predict." Meteorologists on TV make a weather prediction, saying that the temperature tomorrow will be 2 degrees cooler than today. However, air quality researchers generally do not try to predict what the air will be like in a hundred years -- there are simply too many factors involved. Instead, what they do is make projections based on current trends and AQM outputs. For example, you may hear something like, "If the current rate of pollution increase continues, then the death rate due to lung cancer will increase 40 percent by the year 2100". Such a statement is not a prediction, but a projection.

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