Advancing the evaluation of regional-scale air quality models : Air Quality Model Evaluation International Initiative (AQMEII)

This document is the culminating product of a series of ad-hoc workshops led by a group of European and North American air quality scientists interested in instigating a significant advance in the way regional-scale air quality modelling systems are evaluated. The initiative arising out of these workshops has come to be known as the Air Quality Model Evaluation International Initiative (AQMEII). The motivation for the workshops was a growing sense that current model evaluation practices have stagnated, and as a result are not serving research, operational and policy sectors as well as they should. While technical (often statistical) approaches have advanced in the past two decades, it was felt that present approaches are too often uncritically applied, without due consideration of the foundations upon which the techniques are based. This document contains a set of research recommendations for advancing model evaluation. These recommendations are based on ideas generated during workshop presentations, group discussions and informal discussions that occurred at and around the workshops.