THOSCANE: a tool to detail CORINAIR emission inventories

THOSCANE (Tool for HOurly Specification of CORINAIR ANnual Emissions) a software tool aimed at elaborating the emission inventories produced on the basis of the CORINAIR methodology for the needs of air quality modelling community, is presented here. Air quality modellers usually need very detailed information about emissions in the area studied. Also when a box model is applied, not considering spatial features of the emissions, other details have to be inferred from the inventory in order to correctly feed the model: the hourly time profile is usually required for all pollutants, whereas details on particulate matter size spectrum and chemical composition are necessary when dealing with PM modelling and suitable speciation profiles of emitted volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is a stringent requirement for modelling complex photochemical processes in the atmosphere. THOSCANE handles the emission inventory and all these profiles to obtain detailed emission patterns suitable for complex atmospheric box models.