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Improvements to the Noah Land Surface Model in WRF-CMAQ, and its Application to Future Changes in the Chesapeake Bay Region
Citation:
Campbell, P., J. Bash, Chris Nolte, T. Spero, AND E. Cooter. Improvements to the Noah Land Surface Model in WRF-CMAQ, and its Application to Future Changes in the Chesapeake Bay Region. 18th Annual WRF Users' Workshop, Boulder, CO, June 12 - 16, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL) Computational Exposure Division (CED) develops and evaluates data, decision-support tools, and models to be applied to media-specific or receptor-specific problem areas. CED uses modeling-based approaches to characterize exposures, evaluate fate and transport, and support environmental diagnostics/forensics with input from multiple data sources. It also develops media- and receptor-specific models, process models, and decision support tools for use both within and outside of EPA.
Description:
Regional, state, and local environmental regulatory agencies often use Eulerian meteorological and air quality models to investigate the potential impacts of climate, emissions, and land use changes on nutrient loading and air quality. The Noah land surface model in WRF could be used with the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model for such investigations, but WRF/Noah does not output all of the data required by CMAQ. In this work, we modified Noah in WRFv3.8.1 to improve its linkage to CMAQv5.2: added variables from WRF/Noah to WRF output, updated WRF soil and vegetation reference tables that influence CMAQ wet and dry photochemical deposition processes, and decreased WRF/Noah’s top soil layer depth to be consistent with CMAQ’s dust and bi-directional ammonia emission modules. In this presentation we will show that the modified WRF/Noah-CMAQ improved model evaluation for certain meteorological and air quality variables compared to the default WRF/Noah-CMAQ. Finally, we will apply the modified WRF/Noah-CMAQ system to a dynamically downscale climate change and emissions, and present projected impacts on meteorology, air quality, and nitrogen deposition in the Chesapeake Bay region in the 2050s.
