Grantee Research Project Results
2003 Progress Report: Impacts of Global Climate and Emission Changes on U.S. Air Quality
EPA Grant Number: R830963Title: Impacts of Global Climate and Emission Changes on U.S. Air Quality
Investigators: Liang, Xin-Zhong , Wuebbles, Donald J. , Williams, Allen , Huang, Ho-Chun , Zhu, Jinhong , Pan, Jinping , Lin, Jintai , Hayhoe, Katharine , Patten, Ken , Kunkel, Kenneth , Caughey, Michael
Current Investigators: Liang, Xin-Zhong , Wuebbles, Donald J. , Huang, Ho-Chun , Williams, Allen , Caughey, Michael , Kunkel, Kenneth , Zhu, Jinhong , Patten, Ken , Hayhoe, Katharine , Lin, Jintai , Tao, Zhining
Institution: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
EPA Project Officer: Chung, Serena
Project Period: March 23, 2003 through March 22, 2006 (Extended to September 22, 2007)
Project Period Covered by this Report: March 23, 2003 through March 22, 2004
Project Amount: $900,000
RFA: Assessing the Consequences of Global Change for Air Quality: Sensitivity of U.S. Air Quality to Climate Change and Future Global Impacts (2002) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Air , Climate Change , Air Quality and Air Toxics
Objective:
The overall objective of this research project is to better understand how global changes in climate and anthropogenic emissions affect U.S. air quality, especially tropospheric ozone and fine particulate matter (PM2.5). The ultimate goal is to account for both effects to enable state and local air quality planners to design realistic and effective emission control strategies to meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). The specific objective of this research project is to apply a state-of-the-art integrated modeling system that nests a global climate-chemical transport model with a Regional Climate Air Quality (RCAQ) model over North America to quantify the individual and combined impacts on U.S. air quality of global climate and emission changes, from the present to 2020, 2050, and 2100. The RCAQ further includes four high-resolution subdomains over the U.S. Northeast, Midwest, West Coast, as well as Texas for a more detailed assessment of these impacts on local surface ozone, PM2.5, and their precursors. These are the target areas where high probabilities of exceeding the NAAQS for ozone and PM2.5 are anticipated.
The specific objective will be accomplished by three primary sets of experiments. Historical simulations of climate and air quality first will be conducted for system validation and for use as a baseline reference for future projections. Future projections for 2020, 2050, and 2100 then will be made, where the system incorporates scenarios of global changes in climate and/or emissions (three runs per period) to quantify the individual and combined impacts of global climate and emission changes on U.S. air quality. The third set is sensitivity experiments to determine dominant source regions and types (by adding perturbations in the United States or global emission inventories), relative roles of episodic transport versus mean background elevation (using transient or mean chemical inflows in RCAQ), as well as uncertainties associated with key conclusions.
Progress Summary:
In Year 1 of the project, progress was as follows:
• Based on the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) we conducted, the Parallel Climate Model (PCM) and Hadley Centre Climate Model (HadCM3) were recommended as a reasonable two-model combination to represent the uncertainty range in General Circulation Model (GCM) simulations of the present climate and future projection for U.S. regional climate and air quality downscaling studies.
• We now have acquired the PCM 6-hourly outputs for the present climate and the future projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Emissions Standards A1FI (high) and B1 (low) scenarios in window periods: 1995-2000, 2020-2025, 2047-2052, and 2094-2099. To facilitate our CMIP study recommendation, we are acquiring the HadCM3 6-hourly outputs for the present climate and the future projections of the SRES A2 and B2 scenarios in window periods 1985-1990, and 2094-2099. This is a new addition to our original proposal in improving the uncertainty assessment.
• The Regional Climate Model (RCM) produces realistic downscaling from the global coarse-resolution reanalysis and is well suited for the integrated modeling of climate change impact on U.S. air quality. Its downscaling improves the PCM in regional details that are more realistic, especially for precipitation.
• The RCM can significantly reduce the uncertainty resulting from inadequate resolution and incomplete physics representation of local and regional processes in GCMs. The RCM downscaling may produce regional climate changes that are substantially different from the driving GCM projections.
• Our sensitivity study suggests that the combination of the Grell and Kain-Fritsch cumulus schemes can be used to represent the RCM downscaling uncertainty in terms of model physics configuration.
• The Air Quality Model (AQM) using the Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) Model and the RCM meteorology driven by the R-2 has been shown to realistically simulate the observed ozone variations over the United States in the summer of 1995. The results indicate that the coupled RCM-AQM modeling system provides a credible tool for addressing climate impacts on U.S. air quality.
• We have improved the global emissions for the Model of Ozone and Related Tracers (MOZART) v2.4 by incorporating the most recent updates of biomass burning emissions. We are augmenting the national emissions for the SMOKE v2 using the latest NEI99 v3, with new additions from the Canadian and Mexican inventories as well as implementation of the biogenic emissions inventory system v3.
• The MOZART v2 achieves very good agreement with the expected time dependence of ozone over the United States even though it currently has no provision for the diurnal time dependence of emissions, especially anthropogenic emissions in cities.
• The project has progressed as anticipated, and we have submitted one article, almost completed another manuscript, and are preparing several others for publication in peer-reviewed journals.
Future Activities:
We will: (1) prepare consistent regional and global emission projections for 2020, 2050, and 2100; (2) conduct the second set of experiments for impacts of global climate or emission changes; (3) diagnose outputs to quantify individual impacts of global climate and emission changes; (4) conduct the third set of experiments relevant to climate changes and uncertainties; and (5) publish the results in peer-reviewed journal articles.
Journal Articles on this Report : 2 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
Other project views: | All 37 publications | 18 publications in selected types | All 18 journal articles |
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Kunkel KE, Liang X-Z. GCM simulations of the climate in the central United States. Journal of Climate 2005;18(7):1016-1031. |
R830963 (2003) R830963 (2004) R830963 (2005) R830963 (2006) R830963 (Final) |
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Liang X-Z, Li L, Dai A, Kunkel KE. Regional climate model simulation of summer precipitation diurnal cycle over the United States. Geophysical Research Letters 2004;31(24):L24208 (4 pp.). |
R830963 (2003) R830963 (2004) R830963 (2005) R830963 (2006) R830963 (Final) |
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Supplemental Keywords:
chemical transport, pollutant transport, scale interaction, mobile sources, precipitation, nitrogen oxides, sulfate, particulate matter, PM2.5, general circulation models, Great Lakes, Midwest, Northeast, Pacific coast, South Central, air, ecosystem protection/environmental exposure and risk, air pollutants, air pollution effects, air quality, atmosphere, atmospheric sciences, chemistry, environmental engineering, monitoring/modeling, climate change, global climate change, aerosol formation, aerosols, airborne aerosols, ambient aerosol, ambient air pollution, anthropogenic stress, atmospheric aerosol particles, atmospheric chemistry, atmospheric dispersion models, atmospheric models, atmospheric particulate matter, atmospheric transport, climate, climate model, climate variability, climatic influence, ecological models, emission, emissions monitoring, environmental measurement, environmental stress, future projections, global change, greenhouse gas, meteorology, ozone, regional climate model, air quality model., RFA, Scientific Discipline, Air, Ecosystem Protection/Environmental Exposure & Risk, particulate matter, Air Quality, Air Pollutants, Chemistry, climate change, Air Pollution Effects, Monitoring/Modeling, Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Atmosphere, ambient aerosol, environmental monitoring, anthropogenic stress, atmospheric dispersion models, aerosol formation, atmospheric particulate matter, environmental measurement, meteorology, climatic influence, emissions monitoring, future projections, air quality models, ozone, global change, atmospheric transport, greenhouse gases, climate models, atmospheric aerosol particles, airborne aerosols, environmental stress, regional emissions model, climate model, ecological models, greenhouse gas, aerosols, atmospheric chemistry, climate variability, Global Climate Change, ambient air pollutionProgress 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.