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AN OPERATIONAL EVALUATION OF THE ETA-CMAQ AIR QUALITY FORECAST MODEL
Citation:
Kang, D, B K. Eder, R Mathur, S Yu, AND K L. Schere. AN OPERATIONAL EVALUATION OF THE ETA-CMAQ AIR QUALITY FORECAST MODEL. Presented at 27th NATO/CCMS International Technical Meeting on Air Pollution Monitoring and Its Applications, Banff, Alberta, Canada, October 25-29, 2004.
Impact/Purpose:
The objectives of this task include: (1) to continuously evaluate and analyze the forecast results to provide diagnostic information on model performance and inadequacies to guide further evolution and refinements to the CMAQ model, and (2) extending the utility of the daily air quality forecast model data being produced by NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS) as part of a NOAA/EPA collaboration in air quality forecasting, to EPA mission-oriented activities. These objectives include developing and maintaining a long-term database of air quality modeling results (ozone and PM2.5), performing periodic analysis and assessments using the data, and making the air quality database available and accessible to States, Regions, RPO's and others to use as input data for regional/local scale air quality modeling for policy/regulatory purposes.
Description:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in collaboration with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are developing an Air Quality Forecasting Program that will eventually result in an operational Nationwide Air Quality Forecasting System. The initial phase of this program, which couples NOAA's Eta meteorological model with EPA's Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model, began operation in May of this year and has been providing forecasts of hourly, maximum 1- and 8-hour ozone concentrations over the northeastern United States.
As part of this initial phase, an operational evaluation of the coupled modeling system is being performed in which both discrete forecasts (observed versus modeled concentrations) for hourly, maximum 1-hr, and maximum 8-hr O3 concentrations and categorical forecasts (observed versus modeled exceedances / non-exceedances) for both the maximum 1-hr (125 ppb) and 8-hr (85 ppb) are evaluated. This paper examines one month (1- 30 June, 2004) of the evaluation, using hourly O3 concentration measurements from the EPA's AIRNOW network.
The research presented 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 and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and under agreement number DW13921548. Although it has been reviewed by EPA and NOAA and approved for publication, it does not necessarily reflect their policies or views.