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EXAMINING THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND VARIABILITY OF REGIONAL AIR QUALITY OVER THE UNITED STATES
Citation:
COOTER, E., R. C. GILLIAM, A. GILLILAND, W. G. BENJEY, J. SWALL, AND CHRIS NOLTE. EXAMINING THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND VARIABILITY OF REGIONAL AIR QUALITY OVER THE UNITED STATES. Presented at Climate Science in Support of Decision-Making , Arlington, VA, November 14 - 16, 2005.
Impact/Purpose:
The objective of this work is to investigate the impact of global climate change on the regional air quality of the United States. Impacts of climate change on meteorological patterns and primary source emissions are investigated as primary elements influencing future air quality.
Description:
The United States has established a series of standards for criteria and other air pollutants to safeguard air quality to protect human health and the environment. The Climate Impact on Regional Air Quality (CIRAQ) project, a collaborative research effort involving multiple Federal Agencies and academic institutions, examines global climate change scenarios as they might affect regional and urban tropospheric air quality in North America for ozone and fine particles. Global climate simulations have been derived from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) version II'(two prime) model assuming the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) A1B "business as usual" emission scenario. Scientists with the Department of Energy (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have used these scenarios to provide boundary and initial conditions to a regional climate model (RCM) based on the Fifth Generation Pennsylvania State/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesoscale Model (MM5). Finally, the RCM was used to generate10 years of present (~2000) and future (~2050) hourly climate scenarios for the continental U.S. over a grid of 36km by 36km cells. Results for analyses of RCM surface temperature, surface wind, precipitation and steering level transport patterns on various time scales (e.g., seasonal, annual, inter-annual) have been compared to historical point and gridded reanalysis datasets as well as to the future RCM scenario decade. These comparisons are used to identify some key model biases and uncertainties on temporal and spatial scales relevant to regional and national air quality assessment. In the next year, RCM simulations will be used as meteorological drivers in the development of 5-year time series of present and future climate-driven emissions and air quality scenarios generated through the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling system. Results of the CIRAQ project contribute to the U.S. Climate Change Science Program assessments addressing the effects of global change on human health and welfare and human systems.
The research reported here was performed under the Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Oceanic an Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and under agreement number DW13921548 and contributes to NOAA's Air Quality and Climate Programs. Although it has been reviewed by EPA and NOAA and approved for publication, it does not necessarily reflect their policies and views.