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The Environment-High Resolution Limited Area Model (Enviro-HIRLAM) is developed as a fully online integrated numerical weather prediction (NWP) and atmospheric chemical transport (ACT) model for research and forecasting of joint meteorological, chemical and biological weather. The integrated modelling system is developed by the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) in collaboration with several European universities. It is the baseline system in the HIRLAM Chemical Branch and used in several countries and different applications. The development was initiated at DMI more than 15 years ago. The model is based on the HIRLAM NWP model with online integrated pollutant transport and dispersion, chemistry, aerosol dynamics, deposition and atmospheric composition feedbacks. To make the model suitable for chemical weather forecasting in urban areas, the meteorological part was improved by implementation of urban parameterisations. The dynamical core was improved by implementing a locally mass-conserving semi-Lagrangian numerical advection scheme, which improves forecast accuracy and model performance. The current version (7.2), in comparison with previous versions, has a more advanced and cost-efficient chemistry, aerosol multi-compound approach, aerosol feedbacks (direct and semi-direct) on radiation and (first and second indirect effects) on cloud microphysics. Since 2004, the Enviro-HIRLAM has been used for different studies, including operational pollen forecasting for Denmark since 2009 and operational forecasting atmospheric composition with downscaling for China since 2017. Following the main research and development strategy, further model developments will be extended towards the new NWP platform - HARMONIE. Different aspects of online coupling methodology, research strategy and possible applications of the modelling system, and "fit-for-purpose" model configurations for the meteorological and air quality communities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decade progress in numerical weather prediction (NWP) modelling and studies of urban atmospheric processes for providing meteorological data for urban air pollution forecasting is analysed on examples of several European meteorological centres. Modern nested NWP models are utilising land-use databases down to 1 km resolution or finer, and are approaching the necessary horizontal and vertical resolution suitable for city scale. The recent scientific developments in the field of urban atmospheric physics and the growing availability of high-resolution urban surface characteristics data promise further improvements of the capability of NWP models for this aim. A strategy to improve NWP data for the urban air pollution forecasting is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]