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Preliminary Evaluation of the CMAQ v5.3 Beta Release
Citation:
Appel, W., C. Hogrefe, K. Foley, G. Pouliot, R. Gilliam, B. Murphy, H. Pye, J. Bash, Jon Pleim, G. Sarwar, S. Roselle, AND R. Mathur. Preliminary Evaluation of the CMAQ v5.3 Beta Release. 17th Annual CMAS Conference, Chapel Hill, NC, October 22 - 24, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
This presentation presents a preliminary evaluation of the upcoming CMAQv5.3 release, scheduled for the summer of 2019. It is important to evaluate the model early in the release process in order to identify any potential issues in the new model and to quantify the expected changes in model performance in the new model versus the previous version of the CMAQ model. The work done here helps to inform the model developers, model users (e.g. air quality modeling community), and senior EPA staff of expected changes in performance when using the new version of the model.
Description:
In this study we evaluate the beta release of the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model version 5.3, scheduled for public release in fall of 2018. This latest version of the CMAQ model will contain a number of important updates, including a vastly updated aerosol module (AERO7), updated halogen and over-ocean chemistry, a new deposition scheme (STAGE) and updates to the M3Dry deposition scheme, as well as a number of other updates. This evaluation will also utilize simulations using the most recent version of the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model available, incorporating lightning assimilation to greatly improve the location and timing of precipitation in the model. The operational evaluation of the modeling system will be extensive, utilizing annual simulations from both 2011 and 2016 to fully assess the model performance across a range of meteorological and air quality conditions. The impact of the more extensive updates to the modeling system (e.g. AERO7; STAGE) will be examined exclusively from the other model updates to provide a comprehensive assessment of the impact these large updates have on model performance. Evaluation of gas and particle species using routine observations from U.S. networks (e.g. AQS, IMPROVE, CASTNET), campaign data (e.g. DISCOVERAQ), and, where applicable, regional and global data, will be presented. This work will provide an initial summary of the model performance expected from the final release of the CMAQv5.3 model in 2019.