Grantee Research Project Results
2018 Progress Report: Ensemble Analysis of Global Change Projections for US Air Quality Using a Novel Combination of Lagrangian and Gridded Air Quality Models
EPA Grant Number: R835874Title: Ensemble Analysis of Global Change Projections for US Air Quality Using a Novel Combination of Lagrangian and Gridded Air Quality Models
Investigators: Lee, Yunha , Zaveri, Rahul A. , Avise, Jeremy C. , Fast, Jerome D. , Walden, Von P. , Guenther, Alex , Lamb, Brian , Vaughan, Joseph
Current Investigators: Lamb, Brian , Lee, Yunha , Walden, Von P. , Vaughan, Joseph , Guenther, Alex , Avise, Jeremy C. , Zaveri, Rahul A. , Fast, Jerome D.
Institution: Washington State University , Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Current Institution: Washington State University , University of California - Irvine , California Air Resources Board , Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
EPA Project Officer: Keating, Terry
Project Period: January 1, 2016 through December 31, 2018 (Extended to December 31, 2020)
Project Period Covered by this Report: January 1, 2018 through December 31,2018
Project Amount: $789,547
RFA: Particulate Matter and Related Pollutants in a Changing World (2014) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Air , Climate Change
Objective:
Our overall goal is to improve our understanding of the effects of global change on future particulate matter (PM) levels in the western United States. Our specific objectives are the below.
1) Develop a novel application of Lagrangian air quality modeling using an ensemble of high resolution and bias corrected downscaled climate data based on the Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogs (MACA) method to provide comprehensive descriptions of PM changes due to meteorological changes.
2) Employ this method to examine the effects of the full range of climate projections upon PM levels associated with representative air quality issues in the western United States, including wintertime stagnation events, summertime urban to rural transport cases, and wildfire impacts on rural and urban populations.
3) Incorporate changes in U.S. anthropogenic emissions, background concentrations, and land use changes within the ensemble of Lagrangian modeling cases to assess the sensitivity of PM to these factors in the western United States.
4) Integrate the results from these simulations to present the results in forms suitable to inform effective air quality management in the western United States and elsewhere.
Progress Summary:
We have expanded the evaluation of a Lagrangian air quality box-scale modeling framework (HYSPLIT-MOSAIC) against 54 EPA AQS (Air Quality System) sites over the Pacific Northwest and the 3-dimensional air quality simulations from the AIRPACT forecast system (Air-quality forecasting for the Pacific Northwest). Since the end of 2017, we have continuously performed this evaluation by running HYSPLIT-MOSAIC daily. Doing this evaluation allows us to examine the seasonal performance of HYSPLIT-MOSAIC model on ozone and PM2.5 at various AQS sites and against the CMAQ AIRPACT simulations.
We have completed a configuration of the HYSPLIT-MOSAIC modeling framework to perform long-term present-day (2010s) and future (2050s) simulations. We ran a test "climatology" simulation at one of the CARES (the Carbonaceous Aerosol and Radiative Effects Study) field campaign ground sites by performing the cluster analysis in HYSPLIT to obtain the "climatological" back-trajectories and reconstructing hourly meteorology datasets from daily MACA data and hourly initial and boundary conditions from NASA GISS ModelE2-TOMAS global model future climate simulations (daily mean).
Future Activities:
1) Examine the ensemble spread of future MACA meteorology, i.e., the degree to which ensemble member population (i.e., GCMs) is distributed, at AQS sites over Western United States.
2) Determine which AQS site will be used for long-term future ensemble simulations. If a future MACA meteorology has a narrow ensemble spread, we will not run an ensemble simulation with HYSPLIT-MOSAIC as resulting future air quality will be very similar among ensemble members.
3) Run "climatological" present-day (2010s) and future (2050s) simulations at selected AQS sites and evaluate the present-day simulations against available AQS long-term observations.
4) Run MEGAN biogenic emission models with MACA ensemble meteorology to estimate the impact of uncertainty in future climate on air quality associated with biogenic emissions.
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 13 publications for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
Air Quality, Climate Change, Lagrangian air quality modelingProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.