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:

Predicted changes in the global climate over the coming decades could alter weather patterns and, thus, impact land use, source emissions, and tropospheric air quality. The United States has a series of standards for criteria air pollutants and other air pollutants in place to safeguard air quality for protection of human and ecosystem health. This project, titled Climate Impact on Regional Air Quality (CIRAQ), examines the potential affects of global climate change scenarios on regional tropospheric air quality in North America for ozone and fine particles. Scenarios are examined by developing meteorological, emissions, and air quality modeling simulations on gridded domains covering the U.S. and southern Canada. Multi-year length simulations are generated for present and future (2050) conditions. This Task evaluates the sensitivity of air quality and meteorologically-dependent emission factors to potential climate change scenarios while holding all other emissions, landuse and vegetation cover constant at present levels. The purpose of this approach is to isolate modeled sensitivities of air quality to potential climate change scenarios without the added effects from future emission growth or changes. A later Task (Task 20478) develops a series of model tests including future emission scenarios. The CIRAQ Project supports the USEPA Global Change Program (GCP) as described in the ORD Global Change Multi-year plan. Results will contribute to U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) synthesis reports dealing with human health and welfare and human systems.

Record Details:

Record Type:PROJECT

Start Date:10/01/2002

Projected Completion Date:09/01/2007

OMB Category:Other

Record ID: 56093

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Project Information:

Progress :

FY02:

The CIRAQ methodology was finalized. A kickoff meeting with DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) scientists responsible for the generation of downscaled Regional Climate Model (RCM) scenarios was held by AMD on September 10, 2002. Progress was made towards completion of the global climate simulations at Harvard and coordination of those outputs for the RCM simulations at PNNL.

FY03:

Tools developed for generating "model-ready" meteorology for CMAQ

An automated approach for processing the regional climate model (RCM) results with the CMAQ Meteorology-Chemistry Interface Processor (MCIP) was developed to generate "model-ready" meteorology fields needed for CMAQ and the emissions processor SMOKE. A quality assurance module was also developed as part of this tool. The quality assurance process stores statistics of the hourly grid data, so that any unstable or substantially outlying results are flagged. The processing tool also extracts data for various scientific analyses. All MCIP processing, SMOKE emissions processing, and CMAQ simulations will be performed on the CIRAQ Linux cluster. Database management plans were initiated in preparation for the massive volume of model results that will be generated.

Report on linking global chemistry model with CMAQ model for specification of initial/boundary conditions

Conversion maps were constructed for the GEOS-CHEM global CTM chemistry versus the CB4 and the SAPRC chemical mechanisms that are options for CMAQ. Conversions between the chemical groupings are necessary primarily for the organic species. GEOS-CHEM (Harvard, STAR cooperative agreement awarded in FY03) is the global CTM that will be used in this project.

FY04:

Model-ready (MCIP) Downscaled Regional Climate Scenarios

Ten years of base regional climate scenarios have been quality assured and processed to model-ready status using tools developed during FY03. These MCIP files are now available for local, spatial and temporal analyses, SMOKE processing and CMAQ application. An additional 10 years of future scenarios will be processed during FY05.

Completion of First Base Emission Year

Model emissions for the first base regional climate data year have been produced by the SMOKE modeling system and have passed quality assurance inspection. The 2001ad modeling emission inventory was used as the basis for meteorologically dependent emissions (mobile sources and biogenic emissions). Additional years will be processed during FY05 as model-ready climate scenarios become available.

Analytical Tools Developed for RCM Analysis

Local, temporal and spatial analysis tools have been developed using observational datasets and tested on selected base RCM data. These tools will be applied to base and future model-ready MCIP files as they become available.

FY05:

Model-ready (MCIP) Downscaled Regional Climate Scenarios

Ten years of future regional cimate scenarios have been quality assured and processed to CMAQ model-ready status. These data are now ready for SMOKE processing and CMAQ application.

Exploration of RCM Scenarios

An initial exploration of the regional climate model (RCM) scenarios and the production of an internal EPA report have been completed (see TIMS list below). Results of the study identified areas of geographic and seasonsal climate scenario strengths and weaknesses with implications for the CMAQ analysis to come. Additional exploration may be needed to support evaluation of the CMAQ results produced during FY06.

Preparation for CMAQ Program Execution

Code to link CTM output to CMAQ through boundary conditions was obtained from the University of Houston (D. Byun) and modified as needed for this application. Short-duration CMAQ test runs were conducted to identify a hardware configuration (which machines, how many processors) that will

Relevance :This research identifies potential impacts of future climate change on air quality. Future changes in air quality are directly relevant to EPA's mission, and results should provide significant information for future planning of environmental management and air quality protection. Scenario-based analysis of the climatological, environmental resource, technological and economic implications of different atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases has been identified as important to the determination of the range of appropriate future response (i.e., decision support). The development of 20 years (10 years present and 10 years future) of regional-scale inputs provides a valuable resource for state-of-the-science research into the analysis of the effects of global change on human health and welfare and human systems (CCSP synthesis product 4.6). Scientists within the U.S. EPA Global Change Program (i.e., CIRAQ client Program) have been identified as leads or major contributors to 11 CCSP synthesis products. Such products represent a primary means of communicating scientific information from EPA's research and assessment programs to regional and program offices. CIRAQ team members also participate in AMD Air Quality Forecasting (Task 18339) and Evaluation (Task 20463) activities and will use lessons learned from these related projects to develop effective products and summaries on climatological time scales.

Clients :EPA Global Change Program (Joel Scheraga, Anne Grambsch)

Project IDs:

ID Code :12913

Project type :OMIS