Projects

Projects

The laboratory operates in a project-based criteria in order to generate human capacity, desirable skills and to fulfill each project goals.

Current projects

South American Emissions Mega-cities and Climate (SAEMC)

It is a four year international project (2006-2010), financed by the Inter American Institute for Global Change (IAI), in which five countries, ca. 20 researchers and 12 students participate from 9 institutions. The objectives are: 1) To provide accurate regional emissions and climate change scenarios for South America, with emphasis on the impacts of and on megacities; 2) To establish the basis for operational chemical weather forecast for South American megacities; and 3) To strengthen and expand an active research and capacity building network in the Americas functional to Earth System Modeling. There are five work-packages: a) Mobile and Stationary emissions scenarios estimate and evaluation; b) Dynamical down-scaling of climate change scenarios; c) Pilot implementation of chemical weather forecast network and tools for South American megacities; d) Prospective characterization of aerosols in and downwind from South American megacities; and e) Information and Technology. These areas complement each other, and as integrated they establish a key component for Earth System Modeling in the Americas.

Taller de Articulación para La Vinculación de Ciencia y Empresa: e-Ciencia e Industria: Hacia una Infraestructura de Grid Nacional (link)

Worked to identify and review issues relevant to the country in terms of developing e-Science in the search for new collaborations with international researchers and to identify points in multidisciplinary collaboration between different national groups convened. The aim was to generate new proposals for the development of e-Science in Chile and its transfer to various productive sectors. We tried to integrate new players in the national affairs to this discussion.

Past projects

STIC-AMSUD: Air quality forecast with data assimilation in South America (link)

It is an international project involving researchers and institutions in Argentina, Chile and France, developed under the auspices of the Argentinian (SECYT) and Chilean (CONICYT) Research Councils, the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MAE) and Instuitut National de Récherche en Informatique et Automatique (INRIA). The main objectives are: 1) To connect Latin American and French research teams in inverse modeling, air-quality, emissions, climate and aerosols with the SAEMC; 2) To develop data assimilation techniques for air-quality forecasting in Santiago and Buenos Aires with computing, numerical and mathematical support of the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM); and 3) To implement the Polyphemus platform in the Chilean Weather Office (DMC).

Urban Mobile Emissions in South American Megacities (UMESAM)

The main goal of UMESAM is to promote the development of new collaborative research in the Americas, able to connect local air quality initiatives and global change issues, involving researchers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and the United States of America. This research focuses on two work packages: (a) a methodology to estimate urban emissions from mobile sources, and (b) inverse modeling techniques both on the regional and local (city by city) scales. This work is developed within the framework of an international network, financed via the Interamerican Institute for Global Research, which is expected to expand its scope to other pollutants, including greenhouse gases, and the establishment of coordinated regional networks of observations, which are all functional to the consolidation of Earth System Modeling tools for a better basis on atmospheric chemistry and climate research, and the establishment of long-term sustainable policies.