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ADAPTATION AND APPLICATION OF THE COMMUNITY MULTISCALE AIR QUALITY (CMAQ) MODELING SYSTEM FOR REAL-TIME AIR QUALITY FORECASTING DURING THE SUMMER OF 2004
Citation:
Mathur, R, J E. Pleim, T L. Otte, K L. Schere, G Pouliot, J O. Young, B K. Eder, D Kang, S Yu, H. Lin, J. McQueen, P. Lee, M. Tsidulko, AND D. C. Wong. ADAPTATION AND APPLICATION OF THE COMMUNITY MULTISCALE AIR QUALITY (CMAQ) MODELING SYSTEM FOR REAL-TIME AIR QUALITY FORECASTING DURING THE SUMMER OF 2004. Presented at 2004 Models-3 Conference, Chapel Hill, NC, October 18 - 20, 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 ability to forecast local and regional air pollution events is challenging since the processes governing the production and sustenance of atmospheric pollutants are complex and often non-linear. Comprehensive atmospheric models, by representing in as much detail as possible the various dynamical, physical, and chemical processes regulating the atmospheric fate of pollutants, provide a scientifically sound tool for air quality forecasting. The availability of increased computational power coupled with advances in the computational structure of the models has now enabled their use in real-time air quality forecasting. In recent years, such efforts have been used to provide daily guidance to state and local air quality forecasters (e.g., McHenry et al., 2004) as well as to aid in design of field experiments (e.g., Flatoy et al., 2000; Uno et al., 2003; Lawrence et al., 2003). Recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) partnered to develop a real-time air-quality forecasting (AQF) system that is based on the National Weather Service (NWS) National Centers for Environmental Prediction's (NCEP's) Eta model (Black, 1994) and the U.S. EPA's Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) Modeling System (Byun and Ching, 1999). An initial version of the system was deployed to forecast surface-level O3 pollution over the northeast U.S. during the summer of 2003 (Davidson et al., 2003). In this paper we summarize further enhancements to the AQF modeling system as well as initial results from its forecast applications during the summer of 2004.
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