Grantee Research Project Results
2011 Progress Report: Effects of Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Strategies on Air Quality
EPA Grant Number: R834284Title: Effects of Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Strategies on Air Quality
Investigators: Brouwer, Jacob , Dabdub, Donald
Institution: University of California - Irvine
EPA Project Officer: Hahn, Intaek
Project Period: December 1, 2009 through November 30, 2012 (Extended to November 30, 2013)
Project Period Covered by this Report: December 1, 2010 through November 30,2011
Project Amount: $600,000
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: Climate Change , Air Quality and Air Toxics , Air
Objective:
The current effort will apply rigorous, peer-reviewed, and scientifically sound analysis techniques to quantify the changes in pollutant emissions and the resulting air quality impacts caused by global climate change and GHG mitigation policies. Crucial to the current analyses are three quantitative analyses processes: (1) rigorous determination of climate change impacts on regional air quality modeling to enable model adaptation, (2) regional pollutant emissions quantification due to technological changes that result from GHG mitigation strategies, and (3) detailed regional air quality modeling to assess environmental impacts. Rigorous analyses of model sensitivity to climate change, to spatial and temporal emissions fields, and to the air quality impacts are required to deliver the desired understanding.
Progress Summary:
Using results from Task 1, we have developed spatially and temporally resolved criteria pollutant emissions resulting from scenario construction accounting for technology shifts representing GHG mitigation strategies. Focus was placed on technologies with the potential to significantly mitigate GHG emissions in the transportation (i.e., HFCVs, BEVs, PHEVs, Advanced ICEs, biofuels) and utilities (i.e., wind, solar, nuclear, biomass) sectors. We also developed scenarios involving shipping ports, which represent major sources of both GHGs and pollutants in the study domains. The methodology for spatial and temporal emissions perturbations accounting via multiplicative growth factors of NEI baseline emissions projected to 2050 using the SMOKE model has been established and validated. Hence, we can state with confidence that we have the ability to develop spatially and temporally accurate emissions that will be used throughout the remainder of the project.
During this period, we have conducted detailed air quality assessments to examine impacts of technologies shifts via the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. Spatially and temporally resolved emissions from technology based scenarios were used as input in rigorous simulations of air quality for both the NEUS and Texas study domains. The results will be used in the development of additional, more detailed scenarios involving the incorporation of multiple alternative technologies and integrating mitigation strategies across the utility and transportation sectors.
Future Activities:
New simulations will be conducted to analyze the effects of meteorological conditions and background pollutant concentrations on the emissions and air quality impacts in scenarios developed for Texas, the NEUS and California. Statistical analyses will be conducted to determine region-specific effects of global climate change and industrial growth in East Asia.
Sets of plausible scenarios, in addition to sensitivity scenarios, will be developed that seek to elucidate impacts of technologies across sectors with a goal in maximizing co-benefits of GHG mitigation and air quality improvement. Current scenarios focus heavily on a specific technology, while future scenarios will examine a range of technologies. Emissions perturbations for constructed scenarios will be accounted for spatially and temporally using established methodologies.
Air quality simulations will be conducted to examine future impacts of developed emissions fields in the study domains. Emissions factors derived from MARKAL model runs in current collaboration with the EPA will be used to compare the impacts of alternative cases to base emissions.
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 8 publications for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
Electric power generation, transportation, ozone, particulate matter, greenhouse gases, California, Northeast, RFA, Air, climate change, Air Pollution Effects, Atmosphere, air quality modelingRelevant Websites:
Advanced Power and Energy Program: http://www.apep.uci.edu/ Exit
Computational Environmental Sciences Laboratory: http://albeniz.eng.uci.edu/dabdub/
Progress 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.