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Assessment of the MACC reanalysis and its influence as chemical boundary conditions for regional air quality modeling in AQMEII-2
Citation:
Giordano, L., D. Brunner, J. Flemming, C. Hogrefe, U. Im, R. Bianconi, A. Badia, A. Balzarini, R. Baró, C. Chemel, G. Curci, R. Forkel, P. Jiménez-Guerrero, M. Hirtl, A. Hodzic, L. Honzak, O. Jorba, C. Knote, J. Kuenen, P. Makar, A. Manders-Groot, L. Neal, J. Pérez, G. Piravano, G. Pouliot, R. San Jose, N. Savage, W. Schroder, R. Sokhi, D. Syrakov, A. Torian, P. Tuccella, J. Werhahn, R. Wolke, K. Yahya, R. Zabka, Y. Zhang, AND S. Galmarini. Assessment of the MACC reanalysis and its influence as chemical boundary conditions for regional air quality modeling in AQMEII-2. ATMOSPHERIC ENVIRONMENT. Elsevier Science Ltd, New York, NY, 115:371-388, (2015).
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory’s Atmospheric Modeling Division (AMAD) conducts research in support of EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment. AMAD’s research program is engaged in developing and evaluating predictive atmospheric models on all spatial and temporal scales for forecasting the Nation’s air quality and for assessing changes in air quality and air pollutant exposures, as affected by changes in ecosystem management and regulatory decisions. AMAD is responsible for providing a sound scientific and technical basis for regulatory policies based on air quality models to improve ambient air quality. The models developed by AMAD are being used by EPA, NOAA, and the air pollution community in understanding and forecasting not only the magnitude of the air pollution problem, but also in developing emission control policies and regulations for air quality improvements.
Description:
The Air Quality Model Evaluation International Initiative (AQMEII) has now reached its second phase which is dedicated to the evaluation of online coupled chemistry-meteorology models. Sixteen modeling groups from Europe and five from North America have run regional air quality models to simulate the year 2010 over one European and one North American domain. The MACC re-analysis has been used as chemical initial (IC) and boundary conditions (BC) by all participating regional models in AQMEII-2. The aim of the present work is to evaluate the MACC re-analysis along with the participating regional models against a set of ground-based measurements (O3, CO, NO, NO2, SO2, SO42−) and vertical profiles (O3 and CO). Results indicate different degrees of agreement between the measurements and the MACC re-analysis, with an overall better performance over the North American domain. The influence of BC on regional air quality simulations is analyzed in a qualitative way by contrasting model performance for the MACC re-analysis with that for the regional models. This approach complements more quantitative approaches documented in the literature that often have involved sensitivity simulations but typically were limited to only one or only a few regional scale models. Results suggest an important influence of the BC on ozone for which the underestimation in winter in the MACC re-analysis is mimicked by the regional models. For CO, it is found that background concentrations near the domain boundaries are rather close to observations while those over the interior of the two continents are under predicted by both MACC and the regional models over Europe but only by MACC over North America. This indicates that emission differences between the MACC re-analysis and the regional models can have a profound impact on model performance and points to the need for harmonization of inputs in future linked global/regional modeling studies.
URLs/Downloads:
FINAL FINAL GIORDANOETAL_REFORMATTED_COMPLETE.PDF (PDF, NA pp, 1793.861 KB, about PDF)Atmospheric Environment
