Impact/Purpose:

Ozone (O₃) and particulate matter (PM) standards designed to protect public health are routinely violated in California’s South Coast Air Basin (SoCAB) surrounding Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley (SJV) in central California. Global change will affect air quality in California through adoption of new technology, altered background concentrations, and evolving meteorological conditions. The magnitude and direction of these effects are unknown, and so the true public health costs of Global Change can not be quantified at this time.

Description:

The source profiles measured during the current project will be useful for all future simulations of air pollution in the United States. The specific model predictions created in this project will contribute to the “weight-of-science” evaluation for the effect of Global Change on urban and regional air quality.

URLs/Downloads:

2007 Progress Report

Record Details:

Record Type:PROJECT( ABSTRACT )

Start Date:03/01/2007

Completion Date:02/28/2011

Record ID: 200763

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Related Organizations:

Role :OWNER

Organization Name :UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - DAVIS

Citation :Davis

State :CA

Zip Code :95616

Project Information:

Approach :

The current project aims to quantitatively assess the consequences of Global Change on California air quality by (1) measuring emissions from mobile sources powered by alternative fuels as a function of temperature and humidity, (2) creating a source-oriented PM module for the Weather Research & Forecasting (WRF) model to quantify feedback between air quality and regional meteorology, and (3) calculating California air quality in the year 2030 during a range of O₃ and PM_2.5 pollution events.

Emission rates and composition from light duty vehicles powered by gasoline, gasoline-electric hybrid, and ethanol blends will be measured as a function of temperature and humidity. Emissions from heavy duty engines powered by diesel and biodiesel will also be measured as a function of temperature and humidity. These emissions profiles will be used during simulations of future air quality in California in the presence of altered temperature and humidity. Predictions of future climate produced by Global Climate Models will be dynamically downscaled to the regional scale using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) meteorological model. A source-oriented PM module will be integrated into WRF to study the interactions between pollution and local meteorology. The new model will be used to compare current air pollution episodes in California with those that are expected to occur in the year 2030. Multiple episodes (~30) will be studied in current and future periods to understand the distribution of possible events.

Cost :$900,000.00

Research Component :Global Climate Change

Project IDs:

ID Code :R833372

Project type :EPA Grant