Grantee Research Project Results
2010 Progress Report: Analysis of the Co-benefits of Greenhouse Gas Abatement for Global and US Air Quality under Future Climate Scenarios
EPA Grant Number: R834285Title: Analysis of the Co-benefits of Greenhouse Gas Abatement for Global and US Air Quality under Future Climate Scenarios
Investigators: West, Jason , Hanna, Adel , Smith, Steven P. , Horowitz, Larry W. , Emmons, Louisa , Vizuete, William
Current Investigators: West, J. Jason , Hanna, Adel , Smith, Steven J. , Horowitz, Larry W. , Emmons, Louisa , Vizuete, William
Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Current Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory , National Center for Atmospheric Research , Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
EPA Project Officer:
Project Period: September 1, 2009 through August 31, 2013
Project Period Covered by this Report: September 1, 2010 through August 31,2011
Project Amount: $300,000
RFA: Adaptation for Future Air Quality Analysis and Decision Support Tools in Light of Global Change Impacts and Mitigation (2008) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Air Quality and Air Toxics , Climate Change , Air
Objective:
Actions to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) will affect air quality directly through reductions in emissions of co-emitted air pollutants, and indirectly through changes in global climate. Research on the effects of climate change on air quality has emphasized meteorological downscaling to translate future climate change from general circulation models (GCMs) to a regional scale. Here we propose to emphasize methods of chemical downscaling, in which future climate and pollutant emissions will be simulated in a global chemical transport model (CTM), to provide initial and boundary conditions for a US focused regional CTM. We use these methods to address the air quality co-benefits of actions to reduce GHG emissions, both globally and in the US, by analyzing the mitigation of methane emissions and the control of GHGs generally, in future scenarios to 2050.
Progress Summary:
Overall progress under this grant has been very good, and is expected lead to impo11ant findings in future years. Much of the work on this project to
date has involved learning, developing, and applying methods of meteorological and chemical downscaling that will be central to the model applications that are central to this project. We have learned that doing the meteorological downscaling well, using the WRF meteorological model, is a significant and important challenge; consequently, we have made significant efforts in this first year to develop and test these methods thoroughly. We are now at the point where we believe we have completed the WRF modeling for the first exercise in which we will model the effects of changes in methane concentrations on ozone and PM air quality at fine resolution over the US. We anticipate that these methods will be useful for further applications, including modeling the long-range transport of air pollution, beyond the scope of this project.
In addition to this work, other work in collaboration with Dr. Steven Smith has developed means of creating emissions input files for MOZART-4 from the scenarios that he models in the energy-economics model GCAM. This capability will be used in future analyses in this project and beyond. We are presently completing a publication on the use of GCAM with MOZART-2, in which air pollutant emissions in future scenarios were simulated in MOZART-2 to evaluate future air pollutant concentrations. Through an iterative process, then, air pollutant emissioncontrols were adjusted to attain better consistency between ozone and PM concentrations and economic wellbeing among world regions. This process was used in the development of the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios which will be used in the forthcoming I PCC Firth Assessment Report.
Future Activities:
Once the meterological modeling for the first set of simulations is complete, we plan to progress with simulations as planned in the original proposal. We will first address the effects of global reductions in methane on air quality in the US at fine resolution. We will conduct the simulations outlined in the original proposal - first using existing MOZART-2 simulations and then conducting new global simulations with MOZART-4. We have also identified additional simulations that will give increased scientific and policy insight, including an investigation of the importance of direct reactions involving methane versus changing radical species in the new boundary conditions, and their relevance in explaining differences in responses to methane in MOZART-4 and CMAQ.
The second major task will involve simulations of future air quality under the RCP scenarios, to quantify the co-benefits of global actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in scenarios to 2050. We plan to follow the outline of simulations in the original proposal. We have started on this process by collaborating with Dr. Smith. We anticipate that these simulations will begin in earnest during year two of the project, starting with the MOZART-4 simulations, and then progressing to the meteorological and chemical downscaling for those simulations, but these simulations will likely not be completed until years 3 or 4.
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 15 publications for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
PM2_5, PM 10, multi-pollutant strategies, climate-air interactions, RFA, Air, climate change, Air Pollution Effects, Atmosphere, environmental monitoring, greenhouse gases, GHGProgress 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.